


Counting Time

by custardpringle



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket, Hairspray (2007)
Genre: F/M, Occasional Musical Numbers, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-23
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:56:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23272096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/custardpringle/pseuds/custardpringle
Summary: Link took a deep breath and weighed "burglar" versus "pretty woman in supposed distress." He concluded, in the spirit of the women's rights movement, that women were just as capable as men of being potentially insane burglars.
Relationships: Link Larkin/Violet Baudelaire
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Counting Time

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this about a decade ago and somehow missed it in the process of moving fic from LJ to AO3. Did I think it up back when I still drank? Yes. Did I then spend several months making it happen while completely sober? Also yes. Was I then, or am I now, sorry? Not even a little bit.

Books and movies are full of success stories; they're the stories everyone dreams of being part of. The kind of story where someone starts with nothing but talent and dedication (and good looks, good looks can never hurt your chances) and earns their way to fame and fortune purely through skill and hard work (and good looks). Everyone can be a star, in these stories, if they only try for it hard enough.

Contrary to all initial indications, and much to his dismay, this was not the kind of story Link Larkin had found himself in.

On the other hand, there's the other kind of story-- far more common, and therefore far less interesting. The kind where, no matter how talented and hard-working (and good-looking) someone is, no matter how big a break he thought he'd gotten right after high school, he never manages to actually get that break, and ends up doing nameless faceless roles over and over again indefinitely. The kind where someone puts all his time and heart into trying to build a life for himself and the woman he loves, only to find that time should've been given to her instead and she's moved on to bigger and better things than he'll ever see.

That was more like the kind of story Link was living in. Quite uncannily like it, in fact.

Not that he was thinking about that, particularly, right now. He was more concerned with the fact that it was so late at night it was edging into being early morning, and he'd just driven from New York City straight up to Boston, and he wanted to sleep for about the next three days straight. And he was especially concerned, when he unlocked the front door of his house, to find that things weren't entirely as he'd left them.

Link was used to coming home to an empty house-- usually an empty _dusty_ house, and occasionally one that was even emptier than he'd left it. Being gone for weeks or months at a time had that effect; he'd resigned himself to the occasional break-in. And it wasn't as if he kept anything incredibly valuable there, anyway. What he wasn't used to was coming home to an empty house where the kitchen counter was neatly dusted, some food was missing, but nothing else appeared to be out of place. Even the front door had been locked. Not worth calling the police over-- he hoped-- but still weird.

"Hello?" Link let his duffel thud to the kitchen floor and flipped on the lights; there didn't seem to be anyone downstairs, at least, but any self-respecting human being, even a squatter (especially a squatter who dusted his kitchen for him) would probably be asleep at this hour of the morning. Link gave serious consideration to just letting the poor guy sleep until morning and claiming the couch for himself-- God knew he was tired enough--but ultimately it didn't seem like such a wise plan, so he crept upstairs and flipped the switch for the hall light.

The doors to the upstairs bathroom and to Link's own bedroom were ajar, the way he was pretty sure he'd left them; the spare room, on the other hand, was shut fast. Clearly someone had been making themselves pretty comfortable around here. "Hello?" he called again, hand on the doorknob-- and yeah, there was definitely someone moving around in there. "I know you're there, okay? And I'd just like it if you _got out of my house_."

There was more rustling from inside the room, but no response for a few seconds; then the door swung open. The guy inside-- was a woman, actually, a small dark-haired young woman blinking into the bright light from the hallway. Link thought for a moment she might be wearing a long white nightgown, but she was hastily gathering a blanket around her shoulders, and a moment later there was no way at all to tell what she was wearing.

Well, this explained some things. Such as how Link had somehow ended up with the most considerate burglar on the planet.

"Look--" He took a deep breath; this whole thing suddenly seemed weirdly anticlimactic. Desperate criminals were one thing; this was . . . quite another.

"I can explain this," the woman said hastily. She spoke clearly and calmly enough, but her knuckles were white where she was holding on to the edges of the blanket. "I don't know if you'll believe me, but I can explain. Have you seen your basement?"

Link leaned against the doorframe tiredly. It was three AM, he'd been stuck on a plane all night, he had to go back to work in a few weeks-- and now there was a strange woman in his guest room, dusting his kitchen counter and apparently doing . . . something . . . to his basement. He liked to think of himself as a pretty laid-back guy, but there were limits to his endurance. "I don't _care_ ," he said firmly, and straightened again with a vague gesture down the stairs. "I'm gonna go call the cops now, okay? You might want to be gone by the time they get here."

The woman moved towards the door; Link took an instinctive step back, turned on his heel, and clattered hastily down the stairs to the phone in the kitchen.

" _Boston police department_ ," the man on the other end droned. " _What do you need?_ "

Link had never before in his life had to call the police about anything, but nonetheless there was something oddly calming about having this one thing work out exactly the way he'd expected it to. "There's--" He looked up, just to make sure he hadn't imagined the whole thing, and sure enough the woman who'd broken in was standing halfway up the stairs watching him over the railing.

" _Please_ don't," she said quietly; Link faltered, caught himself, and looked back down.

"There's a woman here," he told the operator determinedly. "I just came home, I've been on a trip, and there's this woman here and I don't know her. I think she broke in, can you do anything?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line. " _What's your location, sir?_ "

Link gave his address. "You can send some police officers or something, right? Get her out of here?"

" _Someone will be right there,_ " the operator assured him.

" _Thank you,_ " Link said, probably a little more sharply than necessary, and hung up.

The woman was still leaning on the banister above him; when he hung up the phone she took a few steps further down, blanket still wrapped snugly around her shoulders. "You don't have to do this." She still looked calm enough, but there was a definite desperate crack in her voice.

"Why?" Link eyed her warily and did not, absolutely did not, feel sorry for her in the slightest. "Because you're going to get out of here before the police show up and save everyone a lot of trouble?"

She shook her head. "Because I'm not going to hurt you, and I _need_ to be here. I really, truly do."

"Look," he tried again. "If you haven't got anywhere to stay, that's rough, but this is my house and I can't let you stay here. I'm sorry."

The woman's face fell a little at that, but she pursed her lips. "I'm quite serious. Have you been in the basement since you got home?"

". . . No." Link scrubbed a hand over his face and discovered that even his hair had gone flat. Definitely past time for a shower and bed, and now that wouldn't be until after he'd had to deal with the police showing up. "No, I haven't been in my basement. Why do you ask?"

She hesitated. "There's something of mine down there and I can't get it out. As soon as I can, I'll be gone. I promise."

The woman looked sincere enough, at least, but her face wasn't well-lit enough for Link to be sure; she could've been lying her head off for all he could tell. "Something of yours. Stuck in my basement," he echoed, dully. "Is this a prank, or something?"

"Come on, I'll show you." She moved down the stairs and past him towards the basement door, bedspread still wound tightly around her. Link followed, if only to keep an eye on her, and decided to assume she was an escaped mental patient unless she could prove otherwise. Either way, at least she wasn't going to be his problem much longer. "I'm sorry, I was hoping I'd be gone by the time you got home, but things are a lot worse than I thought."

In the brighter light coming from the kitchen, Link realized through his bewilderment that this woman was actually very pretty, but her face was drawn and she had dark circles under her eyes, like she hadn't been sleeping that well lately. The smear of something dark green on her cheek didn't help much, either. "Um," he said helpfully, and reached out automatically to touch her arm-- and felt irrationally hurt at the way she jerked in surprise. He wasn't the criminal here, after all. "Do I know you at _all_?"

"No," she answered, perfectly matter-of-fact, and stopped in front of the basement door to offer her hand to shake. "I'm Violet Baudelaire."

"Link Larkin." Link shook without thinking, a reflex ingrained by thirteen years in show business, and then winced when he realized what he'd done.

"I don't want to be here," she went on, rather more hastily; Link was starting to be able to make out the wail of a siren somewhere not far away. "I don't even like imposing on you, I-- I have money, or I _should_ , I can pay you back for letting me stay here. But I need to get home to my family, and I need your help to get back there. And if you would just please take a look in your basement--"

"Well," he began, and then realized he honestly had no idea what to do in this kind of situation. On the one hand, the woman was obviously insane, and Link couldn't begin to imagine what _I should have money_ was supposed to mean; on the other hand-- okay, he didn't really have anything good on the other hand. "Miss Baudelaire," he tried again, still with no clue how to go on.

The insistent chiming of the doorbell saved Link from having to come up with a coherent thought on the situation; he snapped his mouth shut and went back to the front door, wondering how he'd even let her get him that close to the basement. The burglar spluttered for a moment and then trailed after him; Link supposed she'd run out of things to say.

There were two policemen at the door, crowding uncomfortably close to see into the house the moment Link opened it; he stood firm, letting them stay out on the porch. "You reported a break-in, sir?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I did." Link took a deep breath and weighed _burglar_ versus _pretty woman in supposed distress_. He concluded, in the spirit of the women's rights movement, that women were just as capable as men of being potentially insane burglars. Better not to risk it, so he stood aside. "And here she is."

To his surprise, Violet stepped willingly past him to be handcuffed; she even unwrapped the blanket around her shoulders, which Link had just remembered was his, and handed it back to him. The look she gave him as she was read her rights, however, was thoroughly reproachful. Link couldn't imagine why. "You really don't have to do this," she repeated, apparently without much hope.

Link shrugged. "You broke into my house. So yeah, yeah I do."

"If you're both finished," one of the cops broke in irritably. "Sir, you'll need to come down to the station in the morning and tell us what happened here."

"Oh, I will, don't worry." Link folded the blanket over his arm and smiled politely. "Goodnight, officers. Goodnight, Miss Baudelaire."

Despite everything, he did feel a bit guilty about the way she looked, trailing down to the cop car in her nightgown with a resigned set to her shoulders. But then again, he was very tired.

\-------

The next morning Link had showered, dressed, and was contemplating the sad lack of breakfast food in his kitchen when he remembered the woman who had broken in; he groaned, knowing what a pain in the ass it was going to be to go to the police station and get asked questions all day. And it wasn't even as if she'd stolen anything, as far as Link could tell.

On the other hand, she had kept talking about his basement; maybe there was an actual reason for it. Since there didn't seem to be any damage done anywhere else, Link decided he had better check down there just in case.

The basement turned out to be a mess. Link had never really used his basement for much-- for flooding when the plumbing broke, mostly, and for storing Christmas decorations he was never home to use anyway. But it was full of junk now: mechanical parts and tools were strewn all over the place, and there was a stain of some greenish liquid Link couldn't begin to identify dried onto the concrete floor. When he went down a few steps to see better, he found that the remains of a massive engine of some sort were in fact _sticking out of the wall_. Like it had somehow _grown_ there during his absence.

"Ulp," said Link, and sat down hard on the stairs to stare at it for a while in case it went away again.

It didn't.

\-------

So far, being in jail circa 1972 wasn't that different from any other occasion when Violet had been in jail. She'd feared something high-tech and convoluted-- or worse, devilishly simple-- but nothing much seemed to have changed except the prisoners' jumpsuits, which were a lurid orange instead of the traditional black and white. The policemen hadn't even given her one; they'd just processed her and dumped her in a holding cell with half a dozen other women until morning.The other women in the cell eyed her suspiciously for a little while-- Violet probably deserved that much for getting arrested in her nightgown-- but didn't seem particularly interested in conversation, so she found a seat by herself in a corner and considered her situation.

Her situation proved to be this: she was stuck in a place and possibly an entire era she didn't recognize, not only cut off from her siblings but from the machine she needed to get home, and sooner or later the police were going to dig up her not exactly clean, and decidedly bizarre, record. A pretty good day all in all, by Violet's standards. Until they found out who she was, and maybe even then, it was going to be a piece of cake breaking out of this place. And then she'd have to find Mr. Larkin's house again and talk to him, try to make him understand why she needed his help. He hadn't seemed totally immovable; maybe they could work something out.

Violet tore a piece off the hem of her petticoat, almost by reflex, and tied her hair back with it. She found a few stray pins tucked away up there, too-- not enough to be used for their usual purpose, but plenty useful enough in some other ways-- and she'd slipped a a few things up her sleeve from an officer's desk. All she needed was a little time.

It was hard to judge time in the holding pen, with no windows, but Violet was just about ready to go when a guard appeared. She tucked her work hastily out of sight while he was unlocking the cell door, and was on her feet by the time he pointed at her and waved her forward. "Get out here, lady. Time to go."

Violet glanced around at her cellmates, most of whom were at least half-asleep, and followed obediently into the corridor. "Isn't it a little early to be interrogating prisoners?"

"Yup." The guard shrugged. "We're letting you go. The guy whose house you broke into came back, said he doesn't want to press charges." He eyed Violet with uncomfortable intensity; she edged a few inches further away from him. "Sure wish _I_ were pretty enough to get away with that shit."

After a certain point he let her find her own way out of the station, for which Violet was quietly grateful. And then she emerged onto the street and stopped dead on the front steps of the station. She'd stepped into a whirl of noise and people: music blasting from somewhere down the street, horns honking, more people on the streets than Violet had ever seen in one place even in the Boston she knew. The buildings were huge and sleek and gleaming, five times higher than any she was familiar with. She felt very small and lonely, all of a sudden; where was she even supposed to begin looking for the man she'd come to find? It was like being in an entirely new city.

"What, not even a hello?" Mr. Larkin pushed away from the railing he'd been leaning on; Violet had been too overwhelmed to notice him, but there he was, waiting for her. He was bareheaded but bundled up in a wool coat and scarf, and the sight reminded her suddenly it was windy and bitterly cold and all she had to wear was a chemise and a petticoat.

"Well, hello." She gave him a thin smile, though her teeth were starting to chatter; it was comforting to have someone with her, though how good the company would be she didn't yet know. "I was just going to come find you."

Mr. Larkin blinked at her and frowned, wary expression softening. "Don't you have a coat?"

Violet followed him down the stairs to the sidewalk, arms wrapped tightly around herself. "They didn't exactly let me stop and buy one on the way here."

"Shit." His hand settled lightly at her back; Violet stiffened and nearly pulled away, but she appreciated the warmth of it a little too much. "I'm parked across the street here, c'mon. I'll get you coffee or something and we can sit in the car with the heat on. The radio's broken, though," he added as an afterthought. "Sorry."

"Thanks, but you don't have to." Violet shook her head, even as she let him guide her across the street to the parking lot.

"I don't _have_ to, but trust me, you look like you need it." Mr. Larkin stopped them next to a small, sleek red car, unlucking the passenger door for her. "Who do you think I am, lady, the KGB?"

"I don't know who you are," Violet pointed out shortly.

She still got into the car and hunched over, trying not to shiver, while he slid briefly into the driver's seat to turn on the engine. "I brought your clothes, too-- you left 'em in the spare room. That should help a bit."

"Thanks," Violet said, twisting to retreive them from the back seat as Mr. Larkin slammed the car door behind him. The car didn't give her much room or much privacy, but she managed to wriggle into her skirt and blouse; they were worn and grimy from a week's continuous wear, but she felt better once dressed. More civilized, better able to cope with whatever was coming.

Mr. Larkin was back a few minutes later, carrying a steaming paper cup. "Never let it be said I'm not a gentleman."

"Thank you, Mr. Larkin." The car was beginning to warm up, but Violet still took the cup gratefully. It was a while since she'd had anything to eat, but coffee would have to do for the moment.

He grimaced, tugging his scarf loose and unbuttoning his coat. "Don't call me that. My agent calls me that when she's pissed. Just Link, okay?"

"Link, then," Violet echoed, between gulps of coffee. "And you'd better call me Violet."

"Okay, Violet." Link twisted sideways to face her, propping an elbow on the back of his seat. "Want to tell me what I found in my basement this morning?"

"It's--" Violet had figured this question was coming, but she made a little helpless gesture, not knowing where to start. "It's like that novel, H.G. Wells. _The Time Machine_. Except that his worked properly and mine's . . . in progress. As you saw."

Link nodded, a little too solemnly to be believable. "You crashed your time machine in my basement. Right, that's perfectly understandable. Happens all the time."

"It's not as if I _meant_ to," she pointed out sharply. "And I don't want to impose on you, Mr. Larkin, but I do need to repair my machine, and then I'll be gone."

Link looked blankly at her for a long moment: for so long, in fact, that Violet began to fidget and looked down into her coffee instead of at him. "You're serious."

Violet sighed. She'd known the chances of him believing her weren't all that great, but that didn't make it any less frustrating. "I'm serious. Please."

"See, here's the thing. I don't believe you. Actually, I think you sound like you just got out of the nuthouse." Link bit at the joint of his thumb, thoughtfully, and shushed Violet when she automatically began to protest. "But my uncle sold me that house for cheap and he's the only relative I've got who'll still talk to me, and I don't think he'll be happy you did whatever you did to his old place."

"So we want the same thing?" Violet sagged in relief. "For me to get my machinery out of your basement."

"Yeah, exactly." Link's fingers drummed on the back of his seat. "You're awful calm for someone stuck a hundred years in the future," he observed.

"I've had a week to get used to it." She wasn't used to it, but she had no intention of admitting it. "And panic never helps anything, anyway, and I'm not _that_ old."

Link frowned. "Wait. You've been here a week already, and your-- let's at least pretend I believe that's a time machine-- is still scattered all over my house? Just how long do you expect to be here?"

"As long as it takes," Violet evaded. She slid the device she'd been working on from her sleeve and fidgeted with it absently. "There are parts I need, but I don't know how to get them. So I'm having to work around them instead, and 1972 is-- distracting."

"I don't get it." Link leaned a little further forward to see over her shoulder. Violet didn't mind; she wasn't really doing anything, anyway. "Your machine worked just fine to get you into my basement, but now suddenly there are parts missing and you can't get back?"

She shook her head. "Not missing, exactly. I think they just ended up inside the walls. It's-- complicated, the physics of it."

"And you need them to get out of here, is that right?" Violet wasn't looking at Link any longer, but she could hear the skepticism building in his voice. "Because I can't go on feeding you or buying hardware or--" he frowned harder as something else occurred to him-- "or clothing, I guess you need clothing too, I don't know who you are and I can't just _do_ that."

Violet felt unexpectedly stung. "I'm not _asking_ you to," she corrected. "All I need is access to your basement to do what I need to do. The rest I can figure out on my own."

"But you've been hanging around my house all week wearing the same clothing, am I right?"

Violet bit her lip and looked down at the invention cupped in her hands. "You don't owe me a thing. I don't want to be looked after."

"Yeah, well--" Link leaned in a bit closer, and Violet looked back up at him by reflex. "I hate to wound your pride, but it's gonna be a whole lot more wounded in another few weeks if these are still the only clothes you have."

"I told you, I have money." She shrugged resignedly. "I just had better things to do first, like make sure the machine is fixable. And talk to you, obviously, to make sure you don't mean to kick me out onto the street."

"Well, I don't know." Link smiled, just a little. "Are you planning to slit my throat in the middle of the night?"

" _No,_ " Violet said vehemently, and stared at him. "Why would I?"

"Because if you were, I wouldn't want you sleeping down the hall from me." Link sighed in apparent resignation. "But I believe you. I think. Sort of," he amended. "I'm really not so sure about this time travel thing, and you did break into my house, but I believe you need to be here for some reason. And you don't seem like the next Zodiac, or anything, and we can sort something out about getting you clothing and spare parts. If we have to."

Violet was blinking at him in confusion. "The next what?"

"You know, the guy in San Francisco--" Link made a vague gesture in a direction that might or might not have been west. "Oh right, you wouldn't know. Being from the past and all."

"No, I wouldn't." Violet pursed her lips in thought, as if she really had a choice, then offered a hand. "Just don't ask me to cook. You wouldn't like the results."

Link smiled wider and shook her hand. "Tell you what," he went on, after a pause. "In exchange for you not cooking dinner, I'll take you out this afternoon, how's that? You can go shopping, get your bearings-- have you even been out of the house?"

"Not really, till last night," she admitted, and nodded slowly. "I'd like that, actually." Violet found herself smiling back; she'd been right, things were going well for once. She'd had to live with far more unpleasant people-- far more agreeable, too, but who could blame him for being wary of her?

Really, this might not turn out to be much of a hardship at all. If it lasted.

\-------

The general impression Violet was forming of the 1970s, so far, was that they were incredibly loud. The automobile Mr. Larkin-- Link, rather-- had ushered her into was not only sleek and bright red but alarmingly noisy; Violet had a suspicion it had been built to be noisy on purpose at the expense of engine efficiency, but Link seemed to count it as a point in the vehicle's favor and she didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise.

She'd lived most of her life in Boston, and yet downtown was barely even recognizable; in a handful of decades, the brick-and-stone city Violet knew and loved had transformed into steel and glass and scaffolding promising more of the same, some slick spiky-looking place that she couldn't seem to reconcile with anything she thought of as _home_.

"They've all been going up the last few years," Link said from next to her; Violet looked back over at him, a little guiltily. She had a job to do, she knew, and gawking around Boston like a tourist was pretty much the exact opposite of that job, but getting her bearings was proving a lot harder than she'd expected. In a few days without even leaving Link's house, she was already nearly overwhelmed trying to comprehend the technology she'd seen available.

What Violet really wanted, given this chance at seeing the future, was to take everything in sight apart and put it back together and see what the insides looked like; in reality, she reminded herself, she probably wasn't going to have the time.

"Hey." Link reached over to snap his fingers in front of her eyes. "Ground Control to Violet, I'm trying to be a good tour guide here." If he was genuinely offended, he sounded too cheerful for Violet to tell.

"It's just strange." She shook herself back into the moment and looked over at him. "I've heard people talking, saying they're going to add a tower onto the Customs House. Thirty whole stories high-- it's supposed to stand out. And now this is a whole city of towers."

"It makes more space, I guess." Link turned a corner, and the tallest of Boston's buildings vanished behind them. "You should see New York-- it's like a _forest_ of skyscrapers down there." Violet was starting to notice a lazy hint of a drawl in his voice-- not nearly enough to be called an accent, but enough to make her wonder where he was from. It certainly wasn't Boston.

She resisted the urge to twist around in her seat and keep looking back; instead she looked at Link, absently watching him watch the traffic, and tried to imagine it. "And the Duchess is in the tallest one, I suppose." He gave her a confused sidelong glance, and she reconsidered. "Or Duke. Is it a Duke now?"

"Duke?" Link shook his head in evident confusion. "Duke of _what_?"

"Of New York," Violet explained patiently. "Not that the Duchess was ever there, that I recall-- she did love traveling-- but she at least had a mansion in the city."

Link burst out laughing; Violet frowned and waited it out, patiently, until he gave her another quick glance and realized she wasn't laughing with him. "Oh, wow." He screeched to a sudden stop at an intersection and stared across the car at her incredulously. "Oh baby, you really have missed some things, haven't you."

"Well, of course." Violet offered him a sheepish smile and resigned herself to dealing with his disbelief for a good long time to come. "What was it I said wrong?"

"There _isn't_ a Duchess of New York." Car horns behind them were beginning to blare; Link looked forward again, and the car slid back into motion. "Or a Duke of New York, or of Baltimore, or an Anything of Anything. All the nobles lost their titles-- I don't know, forty years ago now."

Violet shook her head, thinking it over. "Lost their titles?" It didn't fit-- it didn't fit at all. It didn't make _sense_. "You're sure?"

"Of course I'm sure." There was a rhythm to the way his fingers were drumming on the steering wheel, Violet noted-- something musical, maybe, though what the music was she couldn't possibly tell. "There haven't been any Duchesses or Counts or Kings since my parents were little kids, trust me on this."

 _Trust_ seemed like rather a strong word for a strange (quite literally) man whom Violet had known for ten hours at best. "I believe you," she finally demurred. "It's just . . . something new to take into consideration."

That earned her another quizzical glance, one of Link's eyebrows twitching upward. "And just what have you been _considering_?"

"Where to find Emerson First National." Violet twisted around in her seat again, trying to spot a street sign and get her bearings. "It used to be right around here, didn't it?"

"What, the bank?" Link nodded. "Yeah, I think it's a couple blocks off that way."

It was oddly satisfying for Violet to reemerge from the bank half an hour later, an envelope with a thick wad of bills tucked securely into her skirts, and give Link a grin. She hadn't had any way to be sure her account was still open-- or let her have her money back-- but it had and they had. Things were looking up already. "So." She slid back into the car next to him. "Where do I go for some clothes that won't get me laughed at?"

Link's eyebrows drew together suspiciously. "You got money?"

"I got it," Violet confirmed. "Legally," she added, just in case there were any doubts on that front.

"Smart, good-looking _and_ rich." Link huffed an impressed breath as they pulled back into traffic. "Too bad you're a career criminal."

Violet didn't even bother to protest, at this point. "Are you my tour guide or not?"

"Right, right, clothes." Link flashed a grin across the car at her. "Actually? You asked _exactly_ the right guy."

\-------

"So," Link said awkwardly, when they got back to his house that evening. "Welcome home, I guess."

"So," Violet echoed, and adjusted her grip on half a dozen shopping bags. Her nose and cheeks were ruddy from cold, and while looked just as tired as she had when he'd retrieved her from the police this morning it was more of a satisfied kind of tired, somehow. Too satisfied for Link's peace of mind.

Link took her coat-- brand new, like everything else she wore-- and hung it up with his in the hall. "What now?"

She shrugged. "I thought I'd go to bed early, actually. I didn't get much sleep last night. If that's all right with you."

Link thought of the little gadget she'd had up her sleeve. It had sure looked homemade; he wondered what it had even been for. "Well yeah, I don't mind. Are you feeling better?"

"Relieved. Thank you." Violet looked down, fidgeting with her sweater. She still seemed profoundly uncomfortable in her new clothing; she sounded genuinely relieved, but that meant nothing one way or the other. "I don't know what I would've done."

"I still don't think I believe you," Link pointed out. "I'm still not even sure I didn't dream this whole thing."

Violet nodded, thin-lipped and subdued again. She was eyeing him warily, and Link firmly squashed the temptation he'd had all day to feel _guilty_. At sanest she was a homeless woman who'd broken into his house, and at craziest she'd crashed a time machine into his basement wall; either way he was pretty sure he wasn't the one at fault for anything here, no matter how pretty and how frustrated she persisted in looking.

Link located his duffel bag where he'd left it by the sofa the night before and slung it over his shoulder, waving Violet politely up the stairs in front of him; they ascended in silence, and Violet didn't particularly seem inclined to break it. He hesitated outside his own door, though, since for the moment she was a guest and some degree of courtesy seemed called for. "Goodnight," he offered, quietly.

That actually got Violet to laugh, a quiet quick laugh, though why Link couldn't imagine. She didn't _laugh_ like a serial killer, anyway, not that Link had any personal experience to draw from on that point. "Goodnight," she answered, and vanished back into the guest room.

Link shook his head tiredly, heaved his bag into his own bedroom, and locked the door behind him. Just in case.

\-------

Ludicrous as her story might be, Violet did seem to spend all her time in the house, and almost all of that in the basement working; even when Link didn't see her, one morning, he assumed she was just downstairs. It was a surprise, halfway through the afternoon, when the lock on the front door clicked open and she slipped inside.

Link sat up straighter in his armchair and peered at her over last week's _Rolling Stone_. "How'd you get out?"

Violet shrugged a shoulder. She might have looked even more pale and tired than she usually did, but it was hard to tell with that woman. "Through the door."

"Yeah, but how'd you lock it behind you?" Link shook his magazine restlessly. He was getting used to having her around, but it was still unnerving, the way she seemed to walk through walls. "It's not like I gave you a key."

"And it's not like you live in a bank vault." Violet shed her coat and left it on a hook, as casually as if this were her house. "Or am I a prisoner here? I'd like to know, if I am." She sounded weirdly resigned to the idea.

"You're not a _prisoner_ ," Link said, reflexively indignant. "I was just--" He sighed and closed the magazine to look at her properly. "I'm not accusing you of anything." He was pretty sure he wasn't, anyway. "I'm just curious what you've been up to."

Violet came into the living room and perched on the near arm of the sofa, hands folded in her lap as always. "Honestly? I was in Swampscott."

Link stared at her. "What'd you want up there?"

"I went to see my parents' house. Or where it used to be." She smiled, half-heartedly. "It would probably have been simpler to go to the cemetery, but who knows who else might've been there?"

"Yeah, who knows." Link watched Violet watch her hands. Upon reflection, it did make an odd kind of sense. "So what'd you find? Your house still there?"

"It hasn't been since I was a kid." Violet shook her head. "But there wasn't anything last time I was there, and now it's some kind of expensive deli for tourists." She spread her hands, suggesting a sign. "'Since 1947.' I bet my dad would love that," she added reflectively, "he always did love a good meal. But that lot should be mine. I wonder what happened to it."

There was really no sane response to any of this. "I wonder," Link said uncomfortably, and then, purely for lack of anything else: "Are you okay?"

"I'm done," Violet said firmly, though it wasn't even close to a valid answer to Link's question. "And I'm going to get back to work now."

She had left the room and clattered down into the basement before Link realized what was going wrong here: he was starting to have trouble _not_ believing her.

He tossed _Rolling Stone_ in the general direction of the coffee table and followed Violet into the basement, for the first time since he'd first seen what a mess she'd made of the place. "Hey," he called out, from halfway down the stairs. "Violet?"

She spun in surprise. Jumpy woman, Link thought. "Yes?"

"I can't believe I'm doing this, but." Link folded his arms on the railing and leaned over. "I'm bored stiff, you're clearly having a shitty day, how about we get out of the house and do something?"

\-------

Link was in the shower when the house exploded-- or so he thought, anyway, for a panicked instant where there was an enormous _boom_ and the whole building shook, the plumbing by his ear shrieking briefly in protest.

"God, what now?" He stumbled out of the bathroom still zipping up his pants, skidded down the stairs, and was greeted downstairs by a cloud of smoke and the sound of a hacking cough. "Shit. Violet?" There was no response at first, and Link felt a twinge of alarm. "Violet?"

"Nothing's on fire," she said incoherently, a dark shape hunched on the floor through the grey haze filling his kitchen. "I guess my luck's not that bad today."

"What happened?" Link found his way through and crouched at Violet's side.

She was sitting with her back against the counter and looked unhurt, if stunned; she was also covered head to foot in ash and debris, which made it hard for Link to be sure. It felt like walking into a low-budget parody of a war movie. "I thought I'd help out. Make your life easier for once instead of harder." Violet paused. "I don't think I quite thought it through."

Link groaned. "Are you okay?"

"I think so." Violet nodded and tried half-heartedly to scrub the soot off her face. "I can fix your oven," she went on hastily, "it'll probably work better, even. As long as I'm not the one using it."

"Hey, all I asked was if you were okay." Link settled a hand on her shoulder without thinking. Violet blinked up at him in surprise, and he processed the situation a moment too late: Violet, so old-fashioned he'd never seen her show skin above the elbow or calf, and him sitting there damp and half-naked. He removed his hand, just in case, and grinned at her instead. "Just stop wrecking my house, okay? You've already gotten most of the parts of it I don't actually use."

Violet laughed at that-- a real laugh, not nervous or bitter, her eyes lighting up. "I'll be more careful from now on, I promise."

Link found suddenly that he rather liked her this way: shaken up, yes, but relaxed and off her guard rather than stiff and wary of him. He wondered whether maybe he should try, for both their sakes, to get her in that mood more often. "Tell you what. Let's run the fan and get out of here for a bit--" he nodded towards the kitchen door. "And you can get cleaned up and I'll get dressed and we can clean this up, how's that?" He didn't like the idea of staying in a smoky room for too long, anyway. Had to be bad for his throat.

"That sounds fine." Violet accepted his hand, this time, and scrambled to her feet.

\-------

It was odd, really, how easy it was to settle into a routine after that; Violet had more than enough experience with settling quickly into new places, and Link-- well, she didn't see him for large portions of the day, so she presumed he was doing something with himself even though he claimed he didn't have any work for the next few weeks. A couple of days after the accident in the kitchen, though, Violet had felt guilty enough about the whole affair to brave the takeout menus in Link's kitchen drawer and buy them both dinner, and the day after that Link had scraped together something somewhat foodlike in return. They generally ate dinner together at least, after that, taking turns providing (though rarely preparing) the food, and the conversation was pleasant enough.

The attic remained Link's exclusive territory, and for the moment the basement was more or less Violet's; it was such a simple agreement that they'd never really made it aloud at all. And after all, even on the occasions when Link wandered down the stairs to share sandwiches and coffee he happened to have made too much of, he never actually asked what she was doing beyond vague polite inquiries after her progress. It was the least Violet could do to accord him the same respect and privacy.

Sometime-- sometime _soon_ , she kept telling herself-- she was going to have to admit to him that she wasn't here precisely by accident. That she hadn't meant to land inside his basement wall, true enough, but she had been aiming for this approximate place and time, and had a job to do in it, and could he kindly please stay out of her way and try not to get killed?

There was no reason at all, really, not to tell him. Not unless Violet valued what she had of Link's trust, and there was no good reason for that either-- and yet she found herself still, somehow, failing to mention it day after day.

They had been coexisting in this fairly pleasant manner for almost a week when Violet tweaked something in the machine wrong and the temperature in the basement suddenly plunged a good fifty degrees; she would have given a fat wad of money to see Mr. Einstein explain _that_ , she thought as she hastily switched off the entire engine and went upstairs to see if she had a spare sweater or three.

She'd heard music drifting down from the attic before, when Link was up there, but Violet had usually been no closer than the kitchen, not going right past the attic stairs. The door to the stairway had been left ajar, and she hesitated there a moment as she pulled the sweater over her head, trying to make it out more clearly. It was, unsurprisingly, not much like the kind of music she was used to listening to-- harsher, more rhythmic, more artificial-sounding-- and Violet wasn't sure what to think of it, so she decided not to think anything at all pending further evidence.

On the other hand, it was going to be miserably cold in the basement for a while longer-- certainly too cold for Violet to work accurately down there, so she decided she might as well edge up a few more stairs and have a closer listen for a minute. The attic door at the top of the stairs was around a corner anyway, and usually closed fast as far as she knew.

Usually.

This afternoon Link hadn't bothered closing the attic door at the top of the stairs either, and from halfway up (most of the way up, now) Violet had really an excellent view of him, and he was dancing. Or at least moving in some kind of rhythmic fashion to the music-- which Violet supposed still counted even if, much as with the music, it bore minimal resemblance to anything she would have actually recognized as such.

Of course-- he'd _told_ her he danced, that he was a professional; she'd just filed it away mentally as information of relative unimportance to her mission. _Used to compete_ , he'd told her over food Violet suspected wasn't actually Chinese at all, _but my partner went on to something better and I never found another who could compare with her_. It explained, she realized, why Link looked so strangely awkward despite the obvious self-assurance of all his movement-- he was dancing for two all by himself.

That, or that was just the way people danced in 1972. She really had no way of knowing.

It really was pathetic, she thought absently, still leaning in the doorway just far back enough that Link couldn't catch sight of her in the mirrors. He wasn't by any means impoverished, from what Violet knew about him; there was really no excuse for him to be working out (even in supposed private) in a shirt that snug and threadbare.

Out of nowhere, the music came to an abrupt halt-- there was a crackle and a hiss, and then silence. Violet started, nearly stumbling back off the top stair and treading firmly on a creaky board instead; Link turned, suddenly (relatively) still, and cocked his head at her. "Enjoying the show?"

"I--" Violet fumbled for an excuse, realized she didn't really have one, and gave up. "I thought you looked absurd."

"Really." Link grinned at her-- it seemed to be his default response to everything-- and Violet wasn't sure whether to resent or enjoy that she couldn't seem to help smiling back. "It'll look better when I've got someone to dance _with_. Even I think I look like an idiot right now."

"And why's that?" Violet prodded gently. "Because if you get someone else to look like an idiot with you you'll look better in comparison?"

"Hmm," Link answered noncommittally, eyeing her critically. Violet tried to fidget with her skirt, remembered she was wearing pants instead, and just kept her hands extremely still at her sides. "Are you volunteering?"

Violet folded her arms across her chest and, after a moment, caught herself actually considering it. "I'm pretty sure I'm not, no." She shrugged. "I can't dance, in any case. Not like that."

"What, you can't dance like a pro? Or you can't dance jive?" Link shoved his hair back out of his face with one hand and offered Violet the other. "C'mon, live a little. Everyone else is these days. Or so I'm told."

"I can waltz and foxtrot," Violet offered, and Link wasn't quite quick enough to stop her seeing him grimace for some reason. "Well enough to teach my sisters. Whatever jive is, I don't think it's been invented yet where I come from-- and stop looking at me like that," she added, and took Link's hand as much out of sudden exasperation with him as anything else.

Link shrugged ruefully, free hand finding Violet's; suspecting she had just hit the point of no return, Violet resigned herself to her fate and returned his grip firmly. "Sorry, I know you can't help it. Doesn't mean I can't get you up to-- well." He tilted his head, considering. "Thirty years out of date is still progress, for you."

"Progress towards what--" Violet began, indignant despite herself, and then gave the whole conversation up as hopeless, along with whatever hope she had of understanding the way Link's priorities worked. "Shouldn't there be music?"

"Soon as you've got the steps down." Link huffed a breath. "Okay. Basic step, this is easy-- just watch my feet at first, mirror what I do."

It was an odd kind of relief, looking down at the floor; it let Violet reduce the whole thing to an educational exercise instead of what it was, which was dancing a rather provocative dance with a man she'd known barely even a week. Her Elderly Cousins would have been horrified, but then again they had found Violet almost constantly horrifying since they'd met her, so she was used to that. What she wasn't used to was this faint horror at herself for enjoying this; so she focused instead on Link's feet and on her own, on Link counting off in her ear _one two three four rock step three four-and turn two three four_.

"You'd trip less if you stopped looking at the floor," Link suggested, at one point.

Violet looked up at him and, promptly and inevitably, stepped on his foot. "So I can't see what I'm doing?" She opted to stand still for the moment; it seemed safer.

"It's not like--" Link hesitated, tongue in his cheek. "You're thinking too hard. You've got the steps down-- more or less-- you need to stop thinking about 'em, or you're always going to be behind the beat."

Violet nodded, warily. "And when I forget where my feet go?"

"Then that's my fault," Link said firmly. "This really isn't a cerebral kind of activity, babe. You're supposed to be getting cues from my hands and how I move. Not from my feet. And if you're not, that's me leading badly."

That made a certain amount of sense, Violet had to admit; she wasn't exactly in the habit of turning her brain off for anything, but she nodded dutifully. "Or it could just be me dancing badly."

"Well, I have been doing this my whole life," Link admitted without the faintest trace of modesty; Violet suspected he didn't actually possess any. "And you've been at this-- not quite that long."

"Less than an hour," Violet estimated. "So I suppose I'll have to trust your judgment. Just this once, since you're the professional."

"That I am." Link let go of her for the moment; surprised, Violet pulled her hands back and smoothed her damp palms over the front of her pants. "Music?" He nodded over at the far end of the room.

"I don't see why not." Violet hadn't registered the existence of the machine at the far end of the room until now; she followed a couple of steps behind Link to take a closer look. "Is that a phonograph?" Part of it looked about right, but in place of a horn there were a pair of wooden boxes fronted with metal mesh, and Violet crouched slightly to try and see inside.

"It's a record player." Link looked over his shoulder at her from the shelves of tall paper folders he was browsing. "And no, you can't take it apart, it was expensive and I need it."

"I wouldn't break it." Violet frowned up at him. "In fact, I guarantee you it would work better once you got it back."

"Oh, I believe you, Miss I Build Time Machines For Fun." Link turned back to his shelves, thumbing through to a folder and slipping the disk from the turntable back into it. "I'm still not letting you improve my record player. God only knows what you'd turn it into."

"Don't tempt me," Violet told him cheerfully, but she straightened up again, too late to catch the name on the label of the record Link had chosen-- not that it would have meant much to her anyway.

"Ready?" There was another soft crackle, and the stereo started to hiss softly as the record spun into motion; Link turned back to her and offered a hand. Violet took it without hesitation this time, only to be startled all over again when he reached up and tilted her chin up a little with one finger. "Now remember, you're watching me, okay? Not your feet, or mine-- or the stereo," he added, sounding pained as Violet glanced away, "come on, you've got to at least admit I'm better-looking than that."

"I wouldn't be so sure." Violet shrugged, just to make him glare, and rested her hand lightly on his shoulder as his settled warmly on her waist; the hiss of static cracked into music, jaunty and quick and oddly irregular in a way Violet was only just too preoccupied to put her finger on. "You're probably a better dancer, though."

"Eyes up," Link reminded her, by way of response, and tugged her gently back into motion.

Having fallen back out of the unfamiliar rhythm, Violet stumbled a few more times-- but then she got back into the flow of it, and found to her (perhaps unjustified) surprise that Link had been right-- she knew just fine where her feet were supposed to go, now she'd stopped worrying about it, and once she'd realized that it wasn't even all that difficult at all to pick up on the cues from his hand in hers or on her hip.

The next song was longer; at some point Link had stopped counting aloud for her, though Violet hadn't noticed exactly when. She still felt awkward-- probably inevitable given her partner, she consoled herself, and what did it matter what he thought of her anyway?-- but Link gave her an encouraging grin every time she met his eyes, and since she had after all only been doing this for a couple of hours Violet considered that fairly high praise.

After a few minutes Violet happened to glance over into the mirror. It had been an annoyance at first, a distracting bit of movement in the corner of her eye when she was trying to focus on Link. This time, though, she caught a good half-second's glimpse of their reflection as he spun her, and found that for all her inelegant movement and dress they didn't look a bad pair at all. "Oh," she said aloud in surprise, unexpectedly delighted by this discovery, and by the end of the turn was laughing. This was comfortable; this was fun, however ridiculous she felt.

"What?" Link peered at her as he caught her hand again. "Oh, what?"

"Nothing," Violet lied, but it was suddenly much easier to keep her eyes on his face, and she found herself still smiling as the music trailed to a halt. She didn't feel inclined, or able, to explain the way she'd felt for a moment-- Violet suspected that Link wouldn't be flattered by any kind of mechanical comparison, but it had been somehow like the mental _click_ of getting an engine tuned just right, so that at first it actually made perfect sense when he ducked his head and kissed her.

By the time Violet caught up mentally to the rest of the world, her dignity was just about beyond rescue. Not only was Link still kissing her, careful and sweet, she discovered that she had been not only kissing him back for several seconds but (which was possibly worse) enjoying it, and that the back of his neck was rather astonishingly warm and soft under her fingers.

"Oh," she said again, meaning something (she hoped) totally different, and took a step back out of his arms-- two, in fact, to be safe. There was still music going on the stereo, Link was staring at her with a dawning look of what she could only call apologetic horror, and Violet felt like she should have been angry-- but she wasn't, she just felt tired and bewildered and a little too warm, and not in the way she'd come upstairs looking for.

"Violet," Link said tentatively; he had reached up and started fussing restlessly with his hair again. "Violet, I didn't mean--"

"I just wanted a sweater. That's it, I-- just came upstairs to find a sweater." She knew the response was utterly inane even as it was coming out of her mouth. "You should really heat your basement better," Violet added, out of misplaced spite, and fled.

\-------

The house was quiet almost all of the next day-- almost too quiet, Link thought. A week ago, the silence might've been a relief, but now, just when he was getting sick of being on vacation and used to the idea of having a crazy mad-scientist-type chick living in his basement, it was unsettling at best and alarming at worst. If Link had ever met a woman capable of defending her own honor in unexpected and terrifying ways, he was pretty sure it was Violet Baudelaire. The only sign he'd seen that she was even still there was that someone had finished the jug of milk in the fridge before he'd come downstairs that morning.

He worked out for a couple of hours in the morning, showered, rummaged up a sandwich-- meaning to eat it in front of the television-- and had finished it by the time he'd adjusted the antennae well enough to discover that the only things on were soap opera reruns.

Downstairs, there was a sudden _bang_ and a clatter.

"The hell with this," Link told the overwrought couple on the screen, and switched the TV off again to go see if he had some instant coffee and the makings of another sandwich.

He was especially cautious making his way down the basement stairs, just in case they were booby-trapped-- Link had seen all seven Bond movies, okay, he knew what was what-- but either they weren't, or his spectacular innate grace and balance kept him and the food he carried intact. Violet was kneeling on the floor, long skirt and all, drawing something Link couldn't see on an enormous sheet of paper that was pinned down around the edges by an odd assortment of household objects. She was lost in concentration, half her hair coming loose from the bun she usually wore it in, and didn't seem to have noticed him, so he cleared his throat. "Hey, um--"

"Hmm?" She turned around to look at him, startled, and Link nearly dropped the plate he was carrying in even greater surprise-- he hadn't noticed them from behind, but Violet was wearing a terrifyingly complicated-looking pair of goggles, with what looked to be a good half-dozen sets of lenses connected with about a thousand tiny levers and hinges.

"I brought you lunch," he said after a pause, offering it to her with a slight bow and a flourish to cover his surprise.

Violet flipped a switch next to her eye; all the lenses spun up and away from her face, which didn't actually make her look any saner but at least let Link see her eyes. "Thank you." She accepted the plate and mug with a thin polite smile, nothing at all like the way her face had lit up dancing with him last night, and Link was surprised to realize how uncomfortable he was with the thought that he was making _her_ uncomfortable.

"So." Link cleared his throat, entirely unnecessarily, and peered down at the sheet of paper unrolled across the floor. It seemed to be an immensely complicated and detailed mechanical diagram, and wasn't a whole lot more informative than it had been from halfway up the basement stairs. "Everything okay? I thought I heard something."

Violet leaned back against the workbench-- had there _been_ a workbench back there against the wall before she'd shown up? Link couldn't quite remember-- and tugged off her goggles, setting them aside. "It's kind of you to be concerned. There was an accident--" she nodded over towards the corner of the room where there was still machinery embedded in the wall and now, Link saw, a black scorch mark on the floor-- "but nothing important. These things happen." Link hadn't been imagining it-- there was a definite wary tinge to the way she was watching him. "Was there anything else you wanted?"

"I wanted." Link bounced on his toes a couple of times, slowly, making sure he knew exactly what he wanted to say before he said it. "I wanted to apologize," he went on carefully, "for what I did last night. I wasn't thinking, I didn't mean to make you this upset, I'm sorry." _You were laughing_ , was what he wanted to say, _and it does weird things to me when you laugh_ , but even in Link's head it sounded like a terrible excuse. Even if it was the best explanation he could find.

"So am I." Violet reached up and untied her hair, wrapping the ribbon around one hand and deftly knotting it all back up into a much neater but immensely complicated-looking roll at the back of her head; by all appearances, though, her attention was still wholly focused on Link. "It isn't that I dislike you, because I don't--"

"Oh, _flattering_ ," Link observed, before he could stop himself, but there was something not-quite-sincere in the grimace Violet gave him in response that made his gut ease up a little.

"I get it," she continued, and Link wondered if maybe she'd been planning what to say just as carefully as he had. "People these days are more casual about these things than I'm used to, that's fine, but I have somewhere to be. And even if I were interested in--" she gestured vaguely-- "an _involvement_ with you, it really wouldn't be a good idea."

Oh, she _had_ planned out what to say, hadn't she. Link still wasn't too solid on whether he believed in the whole time travel thing or not, but an _I'm not interested_ was an _I'm not interested_ , so he left it at that-- and then something clicked in his head, and he sat down hard on the bottom step and groaned. "Oh jeez, you're married, aren't you? You said before-- you mentioned you had a family and I forgot. Oh God, Violet, now I'm _really_ sorry."

"What?" She laughed incredulously, and Link looked back up to find Violet staring at him in complete bewilderment. "I'm not married, Link. I'm not even-- well, I _was_ engaged, but I don't think I have been for years." Link tried briefly to make sense of that and gave up very quickly. "I live with my brother and sisters. And we have a lot of aunts and uncles, but they come and go.."

"Your brother and sisters. And a lot of aunts and uncles, and you don't know whether you're engaged or not." Link propped his chin in his hand, and then thought better of it and sat up again-- he was twenty-six and had always had good skin anyway, but you never knew with acne. Better not to risk it.

"It's a long story." Violet glanced down at the floor. "He was a cartographer. An explorer." She undid and redid her hair again, mechanically, for no reason Link could discern. "And one day he went off _exploring_ \-- he wanted to circumnavigate the globe-- and no one's heard from him in years."

"I see," Link said faintly, wondering just how many feet he could cram into his mouth in a 24-hour span of time. "That's-- Christ, Violet, I shouldn't've asked that. I'm sorry. Again."

"It's how life goes." Violet shrugged, looking back up at him soberly. "People come and go, and you can't always do anything about it."

Oh, there was definitely a nice long story there somewhere, and Link made a note to ask sometime-- some other time, preferably, when they hadn't already gone well over their recommended dose of awkwardness for the day. "Speaking of making the best-- your coffee's gonna go cold," he pointed out in the meantime for lack of a safer topic, glancing over to where Violet had left it abandoned on the floor. "I'm not making you another cup if it does."

Violet looked at him, looked at the coffee and sandwich, and after a moment stepped over to pick them up and-- to Link's perpetual astonishment-- sat down sideways on the stair just above him, plate balanced in her lap. Link budged over against the wall to make room for her; he sure wasn't going to complain. "I needed this," she said halfway through the sandwich, sounding surprised at herself. "Thanks."

Link twisted around a little where he sat, letting him stretch his legs out over the floor and look up at Violet without straining his neck. "What're they like?"

"What're who like?" Violet blinked at him between sips of coffee.

"Your family." Link looked down, absently brushing at his jeans. "Your brother and sisters and aunts and uncles."

"Oh, I wouldn't even know where to start with the aunts and uncles." Violet seemed to relax; apparently Link had finally asked the right question. "But my younger brother Klaus is a librarian. And Sunny and Beatrice are the babies, they're eleven and eight--"

Link sat back a little further, propping his elbows behind him, and contemplated this new and unexpected phenomenon of Violet actually volunteering information about herself. The stairs were rickety and really not that comfortable, but-- as weird time-traveling mad scientist chicks went-- Violet was strangely comfortable, and for once he was content to sit and listen a while.

\-------

Despite her continued affection for Link-- or, more accurately, because of it-- Violet was beginning to suspect that spending almost all her time in his house really wasn't the best of ideas. Two days after he had kissed her, she was down at the corner store buying that day's _Globe_ and a MBTA map; the day after that she was on a bus with a neatly clipped want ad in her pocket.

"I don't know about this." The elderly man behind the counter eyed Violet dubiously-- she was wearing a blouse and jeans and boots, and felt underdressed if anything, but he didn't look terribly impressed. "Fixin' cars ain't a girl's job, miss, you might be better served asking 'round some of those big department stores downtown."

Violet groaned inwardly, fixed a placid smile on her face, and propped her elbows on the counter. "Tell you what, Mr. Patton, I'll make you a bet."

That got his attention, at least. "A bet, hey? What kind of bet?"

"The kind where you let me work on those cars back there for a day." Violet nodded at the dozen or so cars waiting for repairs behind him. "And when I have them all working like new by this evening, you give me a job."

He huffed out an incredulous breath. "And if you don't?"

"I'll pay the repair bills for all of them, plus ten percent." Violet wandered around the counter and back into the garage while he was thinking it over, though it didn't take him long at all. "Do you have a coverall I could borrow?"

She lost track of time for a while after that. Repairing things wasn't quite as interesting as inventing them to begin with, and she'd been able to deal with combustion engines quite easily since she was nine, but but there was an undeniable satisfaction to putting things right (and maybe making a little improvement or two, along the way). Mr. Patton followed her around suspiciously all evening, peering over her shoulder and taking cars for test runs around the parking lot when she'd finished with them and muttering darkly every time one proved to be running perfectly.

"Okay, I'll bite," he said sometime that evening, after Violet had slammed down the hood of the truck that was last in line. "You've got the job, though I still say you'd be better off downtown, and from the sound of it you're rolling in cash already. What good's this place to you, anyway?"

"I need to get out of the house more. And I'd make a terrible shopgirl." Violet unzipped her coverall and shrugged out of the top half.

"That's it? You're bored?" Patton snorted. "Then go shopping. Go dancing. Do whatever rich pretty girls are supposed to do these days."

Violet tapped her fingers absently on the hood of the truck. "Well, there is something else I could use a bit of help with."

\-------

It was an odd kind of relief to Link when Violet came home one evening and announced she'd gotten a job. A couple of weeks ago he would've been briefly suspicious of her motives, then just glad to have her out of his hair for part of the day; now he just figured it would do her some good to get out and about more, since it seemed she wouldn't be getting back to her family just yet. Plus, less time spent in his house meant less chance of property damage. The daily sight of a dark gaping hole where his stove had been-- Violet hadn't gotten around to replacing it yet-- was an excellent reminder of that.

Until the day she got cheerfully on the bus to Patton's Body Shop and didn't come home for three days.

There had been times when Violet was so wrapped up in her work, or Link in his own life, that they didn't see each other for a day or two, but even then there were traces of her presence around the house: food eaten or bought, books and magazines moved around in the living room, loose wires hanging out of the television that shouldn't have been. This time there was nothing-- well, there were still wires hanging out of the TV, but they'd been like that the last time Link had seen her. She hadn't been home at all.

On the morning of the second day, Link began to consider going to the police. Maybe they could look for Violet, or they already knew where she was, or they'd arrested her again for some failure or other to fit into modern society. But then he remembered the difficulty he'd had getting her out of jail the first time around, and hesitated; how the hell was he supposed to explain their relationship _now_?

On the evening of the third day, to his immense relief, the front door slammed and Violet dragged herself into the kitchen. Link, who had been trying to soothe his worry with a bowl of ice cream, gaped at her in shock. "Where have you been?"

"Tell you in a minute." Violet barely spared him a glance before slamming a cupboard open and retrieving a box of cereal and the largest bowl Link owned; she looked hollow and exhausted, her face badly bruised in a couple of places. He wondered if she really had gone around some bend or other.

"Violet. Seriously. What." It came out rather strangled; Link was still frozen in astonishment, a forgotten spoonful of ice cream dripping back into his bowl as he watched her pour herself an enormous bowl of cereal and milk.

She tried to tell him, but it was hard to make out the words around the cereal she was wolfing down.

It certainly couldn't've been what it sounded like, anyway; Link sucked the ice cream off his spoon while he convinced himself of that. "Sorry, what?"

"I said," Violet repeated between mouthfuls, "I got taken hostage during a bank robbery." She sounded mildly irritated; less so than if, say, she'd gotten stuck in an especially long line at the drugstore. "You know, if I were a bank robber, I'd _plan_ for these things. They never seem to feed you properly."

Link's own spoon clattered into his bowl. "I was right the first time around," he concluded. "You're insane."

"I'm not making it up." Violet paused to look at him. She had one of the most impressive black eyes Link had ever seen outside of a movie screen. "I'm pretty sure it was even on the news."

"You broke my TV," Link reminded her, torn between relief, concern, and exasperation. "I didn't know where you were, you could've--" okay, probably she couldn't've. "I was worried."

"Oh." She flushed suddenly pink and went to find more food. "I forgot."

"Forgot what?" Link offered her his now-melting bowl of ice cream-- he didn't need it any more, anyway-- and she accepted gratefully.

"That you're not used to living with me." Violet dug into the ice cream with just as much enthusiasm, but she looked apologetic. "Getting arrested, getting in the middle of things-- this kind of thing happens to me all the time, Link. I'm just really unlucky, I guess." She shrugged. "My whole family's used to it, but I forgot you aren't. I'm sorry."

Something twisted in Link's gut as he tried to imagine living like that. He couldn't, really, but even the thought seemed pretty awful. "Don't be sorry, okay? I'm sorry I freaked out. I just want to know that you're okay."

Violet smiled, tired but genuine. "I'm fine. Honestly."

"Actually fine?" Link eyed her narrowly as he got up to rummage through the freezer. "Or I've-had-worse fine?"

Ice cream finished, Violet propped her chin on her fist and watched him. "Both. Well, mostly actually fine."

"Yeah, I can see that." Link knotted up half a dozen ice cubes in a plastic bag and handed it over. "And that's for your eye."

"Oh! Thanks." Violet pressed it to her face with a wince. "I'll fix the television tonight, if you want."

Link shook his head and leaned on the counter next to her. "I don't want. You look like you need a real dinner and sleep."

Violet pulled a bit of a face at him. "Well, aren't you bossy."

"Someone's gotta look after you in between kidnappings." Link shrugged as if it were no big thing-- though it was a big thing, both that Violet apparently got knocked around on a regular basis and that at some point she'd stopped minding. But he was just a dumb chorus boy with a crush; what was he supposed to do about it?

\-------

She hadn't exactly had a choice in the matter, but Violet still wasn't used to working by herself; she was used to being one of four, part of a team. It was frustrating for her to have to do all her own research, and downright impossible for her to cook for herself-- but she could have worked around even that, even if Link hadn't been so accomodating. And-- well, she was doing just fine right now without any trained bats, but you never knew when they might come in handy. The real problem was that she missed her family; she wasn't lonely exactly, not living with someone as garrulous and bored as Link, but her family hadn't been split up for this long since Klaus had been fifteen and some enterprising kidnappers had mistaken him for the Crown Prince of Colorado. It just didn't feel right, somehow.

The answer, Violet told herself, was work: at the garage, on fixing her machine, on trying to research why she'd ended up in 1972 to begin with. The sooner she resolved these things, the sooner she could go home. The problem, of course, was that Link wouldn't let her work all the time; he still made a point once a day or so of bringing her food, or dragging her out of the house to see a movie or take a walk, and Violet could have turned him down, maybe should have, but almost never actually wanted to.

Not even when he chose to make an appearance by nearly but loudly tripping at the top of the basement stairs, cursing under his breath, and leaning out over the railing from a couple of steps down instead of actually joining her downstairs. "Hey. Violet?"

She wiped her hands down the front of her coverall and abandoned her current project-- which had nothing to do with time travel right now, anyway-- to peer back up at him. "Yes?"

Link leant out until the banister creaked alarmingly, craning his neck to see around the basement. Violet had hoped the racket she was making wouldn't carry upstairs; apparently she'd been wrong. "Violet, what the hell are you doing to my house now? It sounds like you're breaking furniture down here. And my basement door _definitely_ is not supposed to open by itself."

"Nothing is broken." Violet folded her arms indignantly. "I had to bring something big down here, that's all. I can put the door back the way it was." All she'd done was install a catch in the dining room floor so the basement door could be opened hands-free-- hardly anything drastic.

"What is it?" Link ventured a few steps further down, eyeing her quizzically.

"Nothing," Violet said instantly. "Just a side project. Not remotely dangerous, I promise."

From where Link was now standing, however, it didn't take him long to spot what hadn't been there before-- an enormous ancient record player, big and bulky and looking (even to Violet) weirdly normal amongst the pieces of wrecked time machine scattered everywhere. "That's all?"

"Well." Violet coughed. "You said I couldn't look inside yours, so I went and found one in a pawnshop. It's mostly the speakers I'm interested in, anyway." She stopped fiddling with the screwdriver and shoved it in a pocket for the moment. She didn't exactly have anything to hide; she just had the niggling seed of an idea that she didn't quite want to mention yet.

"So I was wondering," Link said, appearing to suddenly remember something and making Violet blink in confusion. "I was thinking of having some people--" he made a gesture that Violet thought might have been meant to encompass a number of some kind-- "A couple of people I used to go to school with are in town, seems like a good idea to have a party. If you want to come? Or get safely out of the house, either way."

Violet tilted her head, lips pursed in thought. "Or I could just stay down here." Spending time with Link was one thing; having to fit in with an entire group of people who didn't know when she was from would be a different matter entirely.

"Oh no," Link folded his arms on the banister. Violet suspected he was pouting at her, and tried half-heartedly to glare him out of it, which only made him pout more. "It can't be healthy spending this much time down here. A few hours off won't kill you."

"I have work to do," Violet pointed out. "And I'm just not sure it'd be my kind of party."

Link shrugged. "What would be? For all you know it could be a tea party. With, I dunno, tinkly little music and everyone in fancy hats."

"Is it?" Violet eyed him incredulously.

"Well, no," he admitted, crestfallen, and waved her forward. "Here, c'mere, you've got something on your face."

She scrubbed automatically at her cheek with the sleeve of her coverall and found it no dirtier than it already had been. "Nice try."

"No, really, you've got oil or something, come here." Link grimaced, and Violet took two resigned steps forward so he could reach her over the railing. He produced a handkerchief from somewhere and leaned over the railing to rub intently at a spot on her jaw; she waited it out patiently and tried not to enjoy the brush of his fingers over her skin _too_ much. "See?" he announced after a few seconds, and held the handkerchief up; sure enough, there was a smear of engine grease there.

"I see." Violet rubbed at her jaw again, absent-mindedly, and sighed. "Okay, I'll come to your party."

It was probably still a bad idea, but Link looked so genuinely delighted that it was awfully hard for her to actually regret it.

\-------

Link came home from shopping, the day before the party, to find Violet slumped at the kitchen counter, head pillowed on her arms atop a pile of open magazines. At the thud of Link setting the grocery bags down, her head shot up. "Evening."

"Evening." Link leaned over to see what she'd been reading. "Man, what do you want with these? All they'll do is make you depressed."

Violet shoved the heels of her hands into her eyes. "I wish you'd warned me. I was just studying up for your party."

"Key word: party. Not a test." He reached over and flipped one of the magazines shut, by way of making a point. "If you're really worried, I can hang around tomorrow night and prompt you on stuff you don't know. You don't have to sweat it like this."

"Klaus could do this," Violet mourned, and then dropped her head back onto her arms. "No offense."

Link folded his own arms on the counter and tilted his head level with hers. "Are you okay? You don't look so great."

Violet's shoulders lifted in a half-hearted shrug. "I've gotten used to living here," she explained dully. "My life is calmer now than it has been in a long time. And that isn't saying a lot."

"So what's the problem?" Link frowned, not following.

"People--" Violet's mouth twisted in resignation. "They're still people. And for all the horrible people I've known, none of them ever had hydrogen bombs. I thought it was better here, but it's not. It's the same everywhere." Pause. "Everywhen, really."

Link felt a spark of unexpected defensiveness on behalf of his native era. "Oh, come on. It's not that bad."

"No?" Violet eyed him doubtfully.

"Well, okay, yeah. It is that bad. But things do get better." Link thought of the _Corny Collins Show_ , but he wouldn't have known where to begin explaining that; he needed a quicker example. "Like the bomb, right? When I was a kid, everyone was scared shitless of it. We used to have bomb drills in school all the time. And now-- well, okay, we still might get nuked. But we _probably_ won't."

The corners of Violet's mouth twitched upwards. "That's a terrible example."

Link sighed. "Yeah, yeah it was. But you get the idea."

She was looking a little better, at any rate; it was progress. "Do you really believe that, though?"

"What, that people get better?" Link slid an arm around Violet to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear and squeeze her shoulder, and was unreasonably delighted when she leaned into the brief hug. "It takes a while, and it's hard to tell sometimes, but, uh, yeah. I really do think so."

"Thanks. I needed to hear that." Violet smiled over at him, thin but real, and her hand slid lightly down his back. For a long moment they were leaning in alarmingly close together; then she pulled hastily free and slid off her stool.

Link cleared his throat. "You could thank me by helping put this food away."

"Fair enough." Violet still looked a little distracted, but she shoved the pile of magazines away and got to her feet to help out, and just like that things felt normal again. Link wasn't really sure when _normal_ had grown to include her, come to think of it, but he didn't really mind.

\-------

By the time Violet made it downstairs the night of the party, things were more or less set up; she'd helped him shop and even get the hi-fi set up, but then she'd vanished upstairs for an ungodly amount of time even by Link's standards, leaving him with two hours to sort out the food and drinks and hi-fi system and then fuss over them endlessly for lack of anything better to do.

With fifteen minutes or so to go, though, Violet appeared suddenly in the living room door. "Hey. How's it going?"

"Ready, I think." Link sent a record going and crossed the room to meet her. "And here I thought maybe you'd decided not to come after all."

"What, and let you down?" Violet smiled, though she was squinting at him a bit oddly. "That's a nice shirt. It's very . . . green."

"Matches your eyes," Link said cheerfully, and-- no, wait, in hindsight that had really been a dumb thing to say.

Her smile faded a bit more towards suspicion. "On purpose?"

"Nope. Just happy coincidence." He looked down at the shirt, fidgeting a bit with the top button on his vest.

Violet harrumphed. "Well, at least you look-- I don't know about _normal_ , but you look like you. How about me?" She spread her hands. "Think I can pass for modern?"

"Turn around." Link offered her his hand; Violet took it with no apparent hesitation and twirled neatly under his arm, though the gesture hadn't really been necessary. "You look lovely."

"Why, thank you." She smiled and tilted her head expectantly. "But that's not what I asked."

Link remembered, belatedly, to remove his hand from hers. God, he really needed to get a hold on himself. "You look fine, seriously. Tonight's gonna go fine."

"If it doesn't, I'm blaming you for inviting me." Before Violet could go on, the doorbell rang, and she nodded towards the front door. "Want me to--"

"Nah, it's my house and I'm done in here anyway." Link shrugged.

As it turned out, to get to the front door Link had to go past Violet anyway, so they ended up answering the door together-- and found waiting there Penny and Seaweed Stubbs. A real blast from the past, though the fact that they hadn't seen each other for years didn't stop Penny from launching herself at him and nearly knocking him over.

"Um," he said after a minute, patting her back. "Penny, I can't _breathe_ \--"

"Oops, sorry." She let go of him and stepped back. "It's been a while, is all."

"Yeah, well, I've been busy." Busy avoiding Tracy, maybe, a little, but there was no way Link was admitting to that. "Hey-- guys, here." He looked around for Violet, who was hovering awkwardly a couple of steps back, and waved her forward encouragingly. "This is Violet-- she's, uh, a friend and she's staying here right now. Violet, this is Penny and Seaweed, we went to high school together."

"Your _friend_?" Seaweed echoed with something suspiciously like a smirk, but he offered Violet his hand. "Pleasure to meet you."

"His friend," Violet confirmed, and shook it firmly. "Pleasure to meet you, too-- and you," she added, beaming at Penny.

"Hi," said Penny-- enthusiastically enough, but looking at Violet with a weirdly thoughtful expression. "And what do you do?"

Violet looked startled. "Me? I'm a mechanic. I work at a repair place over in Hyde Park."

"Really! That's so neat." Penny pursed her lips, shrugging her coat off and folding it over her arm as she looked around. "I guess we're the first ones here, huh? It's so quiet-- I didn't know this was a _sad_ occasion."

"It's not," said Link immediately and indignantly, but then he realized that Violet had frozen in place and was staring at Penny as if she'd said something entirely different and alarming. Link glanced over at Seaweed, wondering what he'd missed, but the other man just looked back and shrugged.

After a long awkward pause, Violet shrugged as if nothing odd had happened at all. "It's a peaceful neighborhood. The world is pretty quiet here."

"Um," Link tried, feeling uncomfortable for no reason he could identify. "Can I get you guys' coats? I'll just hang them up in the hall for you."

By the time he got back to the front door more people were showing up, and then Link had to juggle sixteen guests who needed to be greeted and introduced to everyone else and fed and provided with alcohol, not to mention keeping the music going in the living room. It was a long time until he managed to get into the kitchen, which was relatively empty, and provide himself with a drink he expected to sorely need; he'd nearly forgotten about Penny and Violet being so weird with each other.

At least, until Seaweed found him there. "Your _friend_ \--" he was still putting extra emphasis on the word, just to annoy Link-- "is trying to steal my wife."

"She what?" Link followed Seaweed's line of sight into the dining room, where Penny and Violet were huddled together in a corner talking quietly-- and looked like they'd been settled in for some time. "What the hell are they up to?"

"Search me." Seaweed grabbed a bottle of beer and hopped up to sit on the kitchen counter. "Who is she, anyway? Seriously." He propped the neck of the bottle against the edge of the counter and slammed his hand down on the cap, popping it off neatly, and took a swallow.

Link groaned. "She's a friend, she's stuck in Boston for a while, so I said I'd do her a favor and save her some hotel bills. She's living in my guest room. That's it."

"Okay, fine, if you insist." Seaweed held up his free hand in surrender. "I'm just _saying_ , you saying you live with a woman who looks like that--"

"Shut up," Link told him, not at all bitterly, and swatted his shoulder.

Seaweed pulled a face at him. "Fine, shutting up."

Link considered a moment, then shoved some bottles out of the way and hopped up to sit next to Seaweed. "So," he began, looking for a topic at least marginally less humiliating. "How's folks in Baltimore? How's your sister?"

"Inez? Way classier than you'll ever be, same as always." Seaweed shrugged and took another sip of his beer. "Seriously? I think Inez is in North Dakota right now. She's good, we're good, everyone's good."

Link methodically added another shot of vodka to his screwdriver. "How's Tracy?"

Seaweed pursed his lips. "Having a passionate affair with my mother-in-law."

" _What._ " Link spluttered into his drink; he felt dumb for letting Seaweed needle him, but it always seemed to work anyway.

"Oh, come on, we both know Prudence would have an aneurysm at the very idea." Seaweed looked awfully pleased with himself, nonetheless.

Link swatted him again. "Really, how is she?"

"Like I said, fine. " Seaweed glanced over at Link. "Has it occurred to you to, I don't know, _call_ her?"

Link bit thoughtfully at the rim of his plastic cup. "Oh, yeah, I bet that'd go over great."

"Worth a try," Seaweed pointed out. "And in the meantime, like hell are you catching me getting in the middle of whatever you two aren't doing any more."

"Yeah, I don't blame you." Link swirled his drink around a bit and then downed it in a single long gulp. He really wasn't doing so great at keeping the conversation hopeful. "Hey, are you growing your hair out?"

"Now you notice." Seaweed preened slightly, running a hand over his still-short but undeniable afro. "Like it?"

"Yeah, I do." Link tilted his head. "And I'm supposed to be throwing a party here, so what say we go get your wife and my housemate and save them from themselves?"

They both twisted around to look into the dining room; sure enough, Penny and Violet were still talking in their corner and looking altogether more solemn than the occasion deserved. "Past time we rescued them," Seaweed concluded, and pushed to his feet. "Got any cider? Penny loves it."

"There's hard cider in the fridge." Link waved in its general direction distractedly. He didn't know what Violet liked, so he made another screwdriver. Everyone liked screwdrivers, right?

He trailed after Seaweed into the dining room with the drink in hand, and Penny and Violet looked up at them in surprise. "Well, hi," Penny said cheerfully-- even more cheerfully, once she'd accepted the cider bottle from Seaweed. "Did you miss us?"

"Oddly, yeah, we did." Link offered the cup in his hand to Violet, who thanked him quietly and took a deep swallow. It seemed to go over well with her, anyway. "And as your host," he went on, "I'm worried you aren't having enough fun."

"We were wondering," Seaweed clarified, "if you lovely ladies would care to dance."

Violet glanced guiltily up at Link, then back to Seaweed. "I don't really know how," she said sheepishly.

Penny gaped between them. "Link, you're slacking off in your old age."

"I _tried_ to teach her," Link defended himself. "It, uh. It didn't take." He wasn't about to elaborate that he'd enjoyed the first lesson far too much to ever give her another.

"Well, it's not Violet's fault you're a terrible teacher." Seaweed offered her a winning smile and his hand, and after a moment Violet took it and let him pull her to her feet. "Come on, let a guy with _real_ moves show you how it's done."

"Can't hurt, I suppose." Violet looked back over her shoulder at Link as Seaweed dragged her out of the room; he shrugged helplessly, and she grinned.

Penny had gotten to her feet as well, and now she reached over and took Link's hand. "Want to dance? For old times' sake."

"Always." Link forced his attention from Violet back to Penny, and together they went back out into the noise and bustle of the living room.

\-------

It was late, extremely late, by the time they'd gotten everyone shooed out of the house-- not that Violet was complaining, really. She'd expected pretty much more of what 1972 had proven to be already-- a half-comprehensible, cheerful cacophony-- and she'd gotten it, but she hadn't expected to _enjoy_ it this much.

Of course, she also hadn't expected to find Patricia Pingleton's granddaughter here, either; that was just an unexpected bonus. A potentially very useful bonus, though Violet wasn't sure what to make of her yet. On her way out the door, though, Penny had scribbled something on a napkin and tucked it quickly into Violet's hand when Link wasn't looking, and Violet in turn had slipped it into her skirt pocket to worry about tomorrow when she wasn't under the influence of something.

And now most of the downstairs lights were out and she was sitting on one end of the couch, feeling warm and a little fuzzy around the edges and guiltily glad that the music had been turned off, and Link was rattling around in the refrigerator doing something Violet couldn't be bothered to turn around to see.

"Nice friends you have," she observed, for the sake of having something to say.

Something clinked behind her, the tap ran for a few seconds, and shortly afterwards Link wandered into the living room as if by accident and set a glass of ice water down precariously close to the edge of the side table at the other end of the room. "Told you." He sat down hard, appearing to have already forgotten about his glass of water, and tilted slowly and inevitably sideways until he was lying on his back smirking up at her with his legs hooked over the sofa arm. "Aren't you glad you came out of your cave?"

Violet tried to come up with a retort and concluded, tiredly, that she might actually have lost on that point. If he wanted to insult his own basement, so be it. "Yes," she conceded. "Yes, I am."

"Good," Link said firmly.

It sounded like he was about to go on, and Violet looked down at him expectantly, but instead he trailed off into silence and his eyes drifted shut. Apparently he had every intention of dozing off right there next to her, which meant it was probably a good idea for Violet to go upstairs to her own room, but first-- because she had been tempted for weeks now-- she reached down and prodded his hair with a cautious finger. Even after hours of dancing it was still more or less in place, and there was something distinctly unnatural, and a little unnerving, about the way it sprang back into shape.

"Hey," Link blurted, eyes still closed, and Violet pulled her hand back guiltily. "Violet?"

"Yes?" She bent her head to look down at him better; the only light was from the kitchen door behind them. "I'm still here."

"'mglad," he mumbled.

Violet felt a sudden fierce surge of fondness that she tried, without much success, to shove back down. "Link, I think it's time you went to bed."

He shifted next to her, stretching his legs out lazily and then letting them flop back over the sofa arm. "D'you remember the first time you fell in love?"

"What?" It was such a complete non sequitur, when Violet had been half-steeling herself for an attempt at innuendo if anything, that it took her a good few seconds to understand what he'd said and form a response. "Of course I do."

"And you kissed on television, in front of everyone--"

"It was a mountain."

Link half-opened his eyes to stare up at her. His eyebrows did something rather strange in the process, but Violet wasn't quite sober enough to figure out what. "No it wasn't, it was a TV studio. And we were sixteen--"

She shook her head. "No, we were sixteen, and it was definitely a mountaintop." Something had gone horribly wrong with this conversation, somewhere.

"It was _television_ ," he insisted.

Violet frowned down at him. "I think I know what happened. I was _there_."

Link's mouth twisted incredulously. "What, when I was sixteen?"

"No, when _I_ was sixteen," she said patiently. "I was old when you were sixteen. Will be. I think."

"Stop that." Something rather like horror flashed across Link's face, and he swatted Violet's arm lightly; she realized rather belatedly that she had been stroking his hair, and decided to keep doing it out of spite. "That's _creepy_ , Vi, stop talking like that. I'm trying to talk about myself here."

"Okay." She wrinkled her nose a little at his impromptu shortening of her name, but it didn't seem worth complaining about. "Go right ahead."

"The point is," Link went on, and then paused for several seconds, looking confused, "you were sixteen-- I was sixteen-- someone was, and you're in love and you kiss in front of God and everyone and it's amazing, isn't it? It's like as long as you're together you can do _anything_. And then."

Violet shifted, twisting a little so she could tuck her feet up under her and lean back into the corner of the sofa. "And then?"

"And then," Link went on with exaggerated gravity, "everything goes to hell."

"Mm." Violet nodded, slowly, and thought of a sail vanishing over the horizon. "I remember that."

He shifted again next to her, restlessly. "What happened?"

"I don't know," Violet answered, which was true enough no matter who they were talking about. "You tell me."

There was a brief pause, and then "Elvis," Link said bitterly. "Elvis happened."

Violet stared, as much out of bewilderment as out of concern at the unhappy tone creeping into his voice. "What's an elvis?"

"Oh, get out of here." Link shook his head, making Violet's fingers skitter from his hair to the warm skin of his cheek; the night was advanced enough, she noted vaguely, that his jaw was just a little rough with stubble. "Everyone knows who Elvis is. He's _Elvis_."

That, too, went in the file of things Violet didn't feel up to arguing right now. "And what did he ever do to you?"

"President," Link said, not terribly helpfully. "Tracy was gonna be President, when we were kids. Probably still is, knowing her."

"You make even less sense when you're drunk, you know that?" Violet felt fairly safe in saying so; she was pretty certain Link wasn't actually listening to her at this point. "I didn't know that was possible."

"Then be quiet and listen," Link told her, with no hint of corresponding impatience whatsoever. "I make _perfect_ sense-- mmm, you're warm," he went on, and scooted up a little bit to rest his head against Violet's shin.

At least one of them, Violet figured, was going to feel horribly embarrassed about this the next morning; since it was already inevitable, she reasoned, she might as well indulge herself just a little beforehand. "Okay, I'll be quiet," she promised.

"Well, good." Link nodded in acknowledgement, hair catching briefly against her skirt. "Now. As I was saying. Tracy was gonna be President, is gonna be president, and I was gonna be the King."

By now Violet was thoroughly lost, and only slightly because she was distractedly stroking his arm. Link was clearly unhappy; the least she could do was offer a little comfort, and the fact that for some reason she _really_ enjoyed touching him had nothing to do with it. "Of what? Maryland?"

Link hushed her vehemently. "King," he repeated, with careful emphasis. " _The_ King, Vi, Elvis. Who wouldn't've wanted to grow up to be him? No one," he answered himself, before Violet could guess it herself. "Definitely not me."

"So Tracy is going to be President," Violet reminded him patiently, trying her best to make sense of the problem through her growing fatigue, "and you were going to be King. And then what happened?"

"And then--" Link made an utterly senseless gesture with one hand. "And then it turned out my kind of ambition and her kind of ambition, they don't go together so well in the long run. Not the kind of going-together that goes with getting hitched. Not that it matters," he went on, muscles suddenly tense under Violet's hand, "cause here I am, past twenty-five and still no one knows who I am."

"I'm sorry," Violet offered hesitantly, still not quite keeping up but starting to get the gist now. "But you're doing all right, aren't you? You're getting plenty of work in a job you love." The idea of stability was an idle dream for her all by itself; the thought of wanting more was nigh on incomprehensible.

"Yeah, that's where talent gets you. Doing all right." Link sounded distinctly bitter now. "You know where the money is, Vi? Drugs. You shoot some shit and smash up some hotel rooms and kill yourself and wham, front page news. Hendrix is dead, Morrison is dead, everyone knows Elvis is on his way out, look at 'em-- living goddamn legends. Wish someone had told me sooner."

It took Violet a good few seconds to work out what he'd said and be fittingly alarmed by it. "Oh, come on, you don't mean that."

Link let out a long, slow sigh, and the tension in his shoulder seemed to flow out with it. "No," he agreed after a minute, more subdued. "No, I don't."

"You're tired," Violet pointed out, not entirely reassured, and touched his cheek. "We should both get some sleep."

"Sleep sounds good." Link's eyes were already drifting shut, now he'd said what he had to say. "That's you, Vi, genius girl, always right. Should have a comic book about you." He tilted his head and kissed her fingers, lightly, and then settled down again.

"Link--" Violet began hopelessly, breath catching at the easy affection, but there was no answer; he was already dozing off, head warm and heavy against her leg.

\-------

A few hours later Violet jerked awake, startled by nothing at all; when she tried to move, she found her head was aching and one of her legs had gone numb. Further exploration, in the half-light from the kitchen, revealed that this was probably because she'd fallen asleep curled up and wedged awkwardly into the corner of the sofa-- and, to make matters worse, Link was sprawled out next to her with his head pillowed in the crook of her knee and his arm slung across her lap. No wonder her leg was asleep.

"Link," she said quietly, and gave his arm a cautious shove. "Link, get _off_ me." He made a small grumbling noise and budged-- not much, but enough to let Violet slide out from under his arm and off the couch.

Violet sat on the floor for a few minutes, trying to massage some of the circulation back into her leg, and pondered her sleeping housemate. His legs were sticking out from the end of the couch, his shirt and vest had ridden up, and Link's dark over-gelled hair was squashed into a shape that would probably have reduced him to actual tears if he'd been awake to see it. The temptation to take a photograph, had Violet had a camera handy, would have been overwhelming; as it was, Violet suppressed a tinge of regret at the lost opportunity and moved on with her life. Which, at the moment, largely concerned drinking a glass of water and going to bed.

Once the worst of the pins and needles had passed, she braced herself on the sofa arm and pushed to her feet. Her leg seemed to be working well enough, at least, but Violet wavered-- she had less than no inclination to try and wake Link up properly, but it seemed rather a shame to just leave him in the state he was in. She settled for leaning over, retrieving the blanket folded over the back of the couch, and crouching back down to drape it over him as best she could in the dim lighting she had.

"Grmph--" Link shifted again, mumbling something that sounded suspiciously like Violet's name, and tugged the blanket in closer around himself. Violet stayed very still a moment, but he still didn't seem to be waking up, so she sat back on her heels and sighed.

She wasn't here, in this time, for any reason that had to do with Link at all; it had been sheer good luck he even knew anyone who could help her, and sheer bad luck for them both that she was stuck in his house in the meantime. And worse luck still that she was growing to enjoy his company this much-- that she was willing to let him talk her into all kinds of frivolous things when she had work to do, that at some point she'd actually stopped minding how physically affectionate he was.

Admittedly, Violet was comfortably in the habit of being tremendously unlucky. But not this kind of unlucky. It had happened once before, and she didn't need it again-- now, or ever.

"Stop it," she muttered, though whether to herself or Link she really wasn't sure. " _Stop_ it," and stood up determinedly, retrieving her hand from where it had been absently pushing Link's hair back from his face. All she needed, really, was a glass of water (or three) and to go finish her night's sleep in an actual bed, and things would make sense again. Somehow.

\-------

It was a good couple of days after the party until Link saw Violet again; he was almost certain he hadn't done anything too embarrassing, but she'd (presumably) spent three days straight in the basement or at work and, therefore, avoiding him. He was just starting to wonder if maybe he had done something really stupid when he came home from running errands, the day before he was supposed to go back to New York, and found her standing at the kitchen counter, coverall rolled down to her waist, stabbing moodily at a box of takeout.

"Hey." He tossed his jacket in the general direction of the sofa and joined her in the kitchen, rummaging for a fork and poking hopefully at Violet's pasta with it. "Long time no see."

Violet shoved the box absently to the middle of the counter to let him reach more easily. "I've been busy," she said between mouthfuls, but she didn't seem quite as willing as usual to meet his eyes. "Got a good idea and ran with it. Must've been the alcohol."

Link let that sit for a moment while he chewed his own forkful of chicken parmesan. ". . . was it something I did? I mean, I know I'm a soppy drunk, but I didn't think I got _that_ bad."

"No! God, no." Violet blinked at him in surprise. "Just busy."

"Yeah." Link hopped up onto the nearest stool, propped his elbows on the counter and his chin on folded hands, and forgot to take another forkful of pasta. "So, want to tell me what you've been up to?"

"Working. Like I just told you." Violet's eyes narrowed warily.

Yup, definitely defensive over _something_ , and-- in Link's highly inexpert opinion-- something worth digging for. He twirled his fork absently. "Yeah, but working on what?"

Violet set her fork down. "Does it matter?" She was starting to close off, get that same shuttered blank look she'd had after he kissed her. Which was really not a memory he needed to be digging up right now.

There was no way this was going to end well, but Link refused to feel guilty. He'd let this complete stranger into his house based on a completely insane story and trusted her with a whole hell of a lot; he had a right to know. "It matters." He ticked the evidence off, tapping the fork on his fingers. "You show up here, you say you're a time traveller from the past sometime, okay, fine. Totally crazy, but fine. You say you don't know anyone here, okay."

"Link--" Violet began, sounding pained.

"All I want to know is," Link continued, before he could lose his momentum. "If you've got no one and nothing here, where are you all the time? And what're you doing buddying up to my friends?" That, he realized, was the heart of the matter, and the reason his guilt at needling her was being rapidly swamped by genuine frustration.

Violet retrieved the half-eaten box of pasta, reclosed it with meticulous care, and folded her hands. "That's not your business."

"Yeah. Yeah it is." Link flattened his hands on the counter in front of him, stared down at them, then forced himself to meet her eyes. Ironically, she didn't seem to be having any trouble meeting his. "You flutter your eyelashes at me and I let you live here, that's my problem, but you don't mess with Penny and Seaweed, okay? They've got enough on their plates without you dragging them into whatever your crap is."

"I-- I _fluttered my eyelashes?_ " Violet laughed incredulously. "If anyone did any fluttering, it was you."

This might not have been precisely untrue, so Link abandoned it and moved on. "The _point_ , Violet. The point is, I've been trusting you for no reason whatsoever, and I think maybe it'd be a lot easier if you tried trusting me once in a while."

Violet swallowed hard, glanced away for half a second, and seemed to reach some kind of decision. "The thing is," she said, almost too evenly to believe, "I _don't_."

"You-- what." Link's mind ground to a complete halt; this wasn't quite where he'd imagined this conversation going. "You've lived with me almost a month and you don't _trust me?_ "

"It was this or jail," Violet pointed out, voice still almost creepily even. Link wasn't sure he bought it, but it might just as well have been that he really didn't want to. "And like I said, my business? Nothing you need or want to know about."

"Oh yeah, that's really reassuring." Link groaned. "That's exactly what I want to hear from someone who lives in my house."

"Then maybe I should get out." Violet tilted her head and folded her arms. "If it's such a problem."

Link shrugged. "Yeah, well, if it's been so miserable living with me, maybe you should."

"Right," Violet said briskly. "You're leaving tomorrow, right?"

"Tonight," Link corrected. He didn't particularly feel like sticking around, after this, and if there was one thing he did believe it was that Violet wasn't inclined to petty theft.

Her lips thinned. "Well, I think I can manage to be gone by the time you get back."

Link was driving past the city bounds by the time it occurred to him that, if Violet had been bluffing, he'd completely failed to call her on it. _Good riddance_ , he told himself firmly. The woman was clearly paranoid, he was calling the cops on her if she was still there when he got home in a few more weeks, and that was the end of that.

\-------

Link had been back in New York for three whole hours before he started to regret running out; he hadn't needed to leave this soon, he'd just wanted to get out of the house period, and now he had nothing much to do except pace his hotel room and worry (much as he hated to admit it) about Violet.

He made it till the next morning before he got sick of the hotel room entirely and resolved to go outside and do _something_ , though Link wasn't sure what. Getting hopelessly, embarrassingly drunk twice in three nights didn't seem like the best solution, but he needed air-- or what passed for air in Manhattan-- while he figured out what was. Link grabbed his jacket, opened the door with one hand while still shoving the other into a sleeve, and found Penny standing on the other side with her hand half-raised to knock.

"Huh." She stared at her own hand, at the space where the door had been, and finally at Link, who was staring back at her. "I didn't know that ever happened in real life."

Link stared a moment longer, just for variety's sake. "I thought you guys were going back to Baltimore today."

"And New York's on the way to Baltimore." Penny lowered her hand, finally, and beamed innocently up at him. "Can I come in?"

"You-- um, I was just." There was something a little terrifying in the wide, overly-earnest way she was smiling at him; Link hesitated, then stepped back and waved her in. "I'd make you coffee, but it's pretty terrible 'round here."

"Then I think I'll do without, thanks." Penny slipped inside, shedding her coat onto the bed and perching on the edge next to it.

Link followed, dropping into the room's excuse for an armchair before bothering to remove his own jacket. "So, Mrs. Stubbs. What can I do for you today?"

Penny's smile had thinned into something Link recognized as rather uncomfortably similar to the way Tracy smiled when she wasn't actually happy with you at all. " _Mr._ Larkin, I think we have a tiny bit of a problem."

"We do?" Link considered this news for a moment and then rephrased his question. "Who's we?"

"Well, there're lots of wes, actually." Penny tilted her head, tugging thoughtfully on her long ponytail with one hand and counting off on the fingers of the other. "The group I represent's got a problem, so I guess everyone's got a problem, but Violet Baudelaire-- well, you've met her, she always did have to make everything her problem and fix everything herself."

Faced with an explanation that sounded like English but made no actual sense, Link seized on the closest thing to a meaningful phrase he could find. "The group you represent?" he repeated, and groaned. "Oh God, Penny, tell me you're not CIA. I don't think I could take that."

"Ew, government? No." She grimaced at him. "It's not like that at all."

"Then what is it like?" Link rubbed a hand over his face and leaned forward in his chair, praying for a straight answer from someone. Just this once. "I'm trying here, Penny. I've got this woman in my guest room and I don't know if she's crazy or in some kind of trouble or what I've gotten stuck in here, and I just need someone to lay it all out nice and simple for me, okay?"

"Okay." Penny gave him a reassuring smile, reaching over to pat his knee briefly. "You can relax, by the way. The world's not ending or anything." She paused to reconsider this. "Well, probably not."

"What?" Link stared at her, not exactly reassured.

Penny bit her lip. "Sorry! Sorry. I'll start from the beginning."

"Yeah, that sounds good." Link nodded slowly, hands folded in his lap.

"Look, when I was little-- really little, when my dad was still around--" Penny exhaled slowly, gathering her thoughts. "I adored his mom, my Gramma Pat, she was my favorite person in the world. I was always down the street visiting her, it drove my mom batty. You know her." Her face suddenly screwed into an alarmingly close imitation of her mother's. " _You stay away from that woman, Penelope! Nothing good ever came of that family_ \-- except me and my dad, I guess-- _Wicked un-Godly people, the lot of them!_ "

Link, who had had the privilege of hearing exactly what Penny's mother thought of him on multiple occasions, nodded in perfect understanding and waited patiently to find out just what this had to do with him. "Yeah, I can imagine."

"My mom _really_ hated Gramma Pat," Penny said reflectively, looking off past Link's right shoulder for a moment. "I could never figure out why-- but that's not the point, the point is Gramma had all these weird friends and sometimes one or two would be there visiting her when I went over. There was this guy named Hortense who never stopped talking about seagulls, I remember him, and there was an old lady the same age as my gramma who used to come over and make her dinner sometimes. And her name was Sunny."

"I-- wait." Link peered at Penny, who was watching him expectantly; it took a second or two for him to remember where he'd heard that name recently. "Violet's sister. She told me she had a baby sister named Sunny who cooked." In another moment his brain caught up with his mouth, and he shook his head. "You're saying her baby sister is the same age as your grandma?" He'd done just fine for weeks not thinking too hard about whether the thing in his basement was real or not, but it was getting to be awfully difficult.

Penny nodded. "And they were friends. Since they were little, even. They used to tell me stories."

"Of course they did." Link ground the heels of his hands against his eyes, trying to decide what aspect of this worried him the most. "So Violet-- she really did come here from the past, is what you're telling me? In a time machine and everything?"

"You've got to admit it's pretty neat," Penny observed.

"Yeah, it's a really fun time," Link agreed glumly. "I wanted to believe her, Penny, you know? But it was so weird and she wouldn't even tell me what was going on and-- oh shit, this is such a mess."

"Which is why I'm here, because she's not gonna tell you more than she thinks she has to. " Penny leaned forward, elbows propped on her knees and chin in her hands. "Violet's family, the Baudelaires-- they're unlucky. Like the Kennedys, you know? But a whole lot worse. They're _legendary_ for it, which now I think of it is really kind of sick, and it's some kind of miracle that Violet managed to keep herself and her brother and sister all alive 'til adulthood."

"Legendary where?" Link eyed her suspiciously. "Let me guess, her brother grew up to be President?" Obviously this was what he got for sleeping through American History in ninth grade.

Penny waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, no, he would've hated that. I think he sold books or something. No, we-- Great-Aunt Sunny used to say that _her_ aunt used to say there were two kinds of firemen, the ones who set fires and the ones who put 'em out. That's what we do-- my family and Violet's and a bunch of others, for generations now. So it is like the Mafia," she interrupted herself, "I guess. Just a little. But we don't kill people, we just try to keep the world quiet. So to speak."

Clearly Link had wandered into a bad movie, somehow, when he wasn't looking. "And you're the ones putting out the fires, right? You're the good guys?"

" _Link_." Penny snorted derisively. "What else would we be doing?"

Link nodded; he would never really have believed otherwise, but it never hurt to be sure. "So Violet's here putting out some kind of fire?"

"That's her business. Her decision how much to tell you." Penny shrugged regretfully. "I just wanted to make sure you'd believe her if she does."

"Don't worry, I will." Link buried his face in his hands. "Why is it," he wondered aloud through his fingers, "I always go for the ones that are gonna get me in the most trouble?"

"I wish I knew." Penny patted his head, helpfully. "But I'll tell Tracy you said so. I'm sure she'll be flattered."

\-------

It was late enough when Violet got home from work that she almost didn't notice any mail had come; she was groping around for the switch to the kitchen light when her foot skidded on the envelope on the floor. Probably something else for Link; she'd been accumulating a small heap of his junk mail on the kitchen counter. She crouched to retrieve it: a small hand-addressed envelope, so probably not junk-- in fact, Violet realized with a jolt, it was written in Link's own handwriting and addressed to her. Brow creased, she sat down cross-legged on the kitchen floor to deal with it.

There were only two small bits of paper enclosed: a round-trip train ticket to New York leaving the next afternoon, and a note on hotel stationery that just said _Hope you're still around to get this-- think you can spare the time to come visit?_ There was no signature, and following through didn't seem like a great idea, but Violet found herself smiling anyway.

\-------

Accordingly, she went right back to work the next morning. It really wasn't that bad a place to be; Patton had grown to like her with alarming speed once he realized that she really could get cars back out his door in better shape than before they'd broken down. Sometimes in better shape than they'd been new. Patton got a heavy stream of customers, the customers got their cars working miraculously well, and Violet got a solid commission and could come in (or not) whenever she felt like. Everyone won.

Even Link won, Violet told herself, with her here instead of with him. Even if he didn't realize it; even if it didn't feel like a win. Violet elected just not to think about it too hard, or to keep an eye on the clock to know when the train to New York left. In fact, she did her best not to think about anything at all besides car engines. She didn't even bother to look up when footsteps came up alongside her-- probably just Patton, and she had no particular desire to talk to him right now.

"Hey. Violet Baudelaire." Seaweed crouched down and peered under the truck. "That you under there?"

Violet bit her lip, not looking away from the joint she was carefully loosening. "What are you doing here?"

"Helping out, same as you asked us to." Seaweed tilted his head. "So are you coming out to talk to me or what?"

"Only if you've got something useful to say." Violet scooted out from under the truck, though, sitting up on her dolly and folding her arms across her knees.

"I have _always_ got something useful to say." Seaweed sat down next to her, throwing a hand out hastily when the dolly shifted a little under his added weight. "You'd just better listen."

Violet found a rag and wiped her hands methodically. She wasn't sure she was comfortable with where this seemed to be going. "I'm listening."

"So, you and Link," Seaweed began, and Violet groaned in resignation. "He's in New York and you're still here in Boston. What's up with that?"

Violet wound the rag contemplatively around her hand. "We both have jobs, is what's up. And I asked you for help finding Olaf, not with my personal life. _If_ I even had one," she added hastily.

"Exactly. You asked me to help, and I'd be helping if you'd let me finish." Seaweed rolled his shoulders. "Because even _if_ you two were so far gone over each other that my blind grandma in Atlanta could see it, it would clearly be none of my concern, because I'm here strictly on business."

"Okay, okay." Violet laughed despite herself. "Let's hear what you've got to say."

Seaweed twiddled his thumbs briefly. "Okay, see, here's the thing with Link: I have known him a really long time, way longer than he's known me, and the man _means_ well. He truly, always does. It just takes him a bit longer than some people to get there."

"Oh, I don't blame him." Violet shook her head. "I haven't exactly been straight with him about a lot of things."

"Sure doesn't seem like it." Seaweed harrumphed. "Are you _going_ to?"

Violet swallowed hard and thought it over, even though she'd already made up her mind days ago. "No. No, I'm not."

Seaweed's eyes narrowed. "And why the hell not?"

"At this point, after what he said to me? I really don't think he'd believe me. Or be interested, even then." Violet smiled a little, despite herself. "He kicked me out, remember?"

"Bzzt," said Seaweed cheerfully. "From where I'm sitting, it looks like he went off in a snit and left you to your own devices in his house. Sure he doesn't trust you. Wanna try another reason?"

"You sound like you already know what answer you're looking for." Violet eyed him sidelong. "Want to tell me what it is?"

He shrugged. "Not when it's gonna be so much fun to hear you admit it."

Violet squinted. "Are you sure you don't know my sister?"

"Only by reputation." Seaweed huffed an impatient sigh. "Now, if you don't mind, I wish you'd hurry up and be honest with me so I can get to the point I'm trying to make here."

"Well." Violet put it off as long as she could regardless, looking at the cars around her and the grime under her nails and pretty much everywhere except at Seaweed. "I don't want Link to know anything about it," she said slowly at last, splaying her fingers over the edge of the dolly and staring down at them intently. "I want him gone and out of the way of whatever's going on. I want him _safe_. And he won't be, if I go back to him."

Seaweed sat back triumphantly. "See, now that's more like it."

"It's not funny," Violet snapped, briefly irritated with him. "You know who I am. You know what happens to people around me."

"I'd say you're being dramatic--" Seaweed shrugged helplessly-- "but you're right. And yeah, I know it, and you know it, so I'm wondering just what makes you think he's safe _now._ "

Violet froze.

"You've been living together, what?" Seaweed tilted his head. "A month? Hanging out together in public?"

"More than that," she corrected mechanically.

Seaweed nodded. "So I figure, if I'm a bad guy looking to get to you through someone else, I've had _weeks_ to zero in on Link, who much as I like the man is basically a Villain's dream hostage. Look," he went on, sounding more sympathetic. He might've budged a bit closer to her, too; she still wasn't looking up. "I've gotten that phone call, okay? We all have. The _I think I have something of yours_ phone call. And it's always shitty. But the way things are right now, when you get that call you're just gonna have to drive all the way down to New York to do anything about it. And that'll be even shittier."

Violet flinched. "So you don't think I've got much of a choice."

"Nope." Seaweed's mouth twisted. "Now, whatever else comes of you talking to him-- that, I won't answer for."

"Well, thank you anyway." Violet glanced at the clock, for the first time in hours. "I've missed my train," she said blankly.

"That's okay." Seaweed got to his feet-- the dolly shifted again, and Violet had to grab to catch herself-- and offered her a hand. "I'll give you a ride."

\-------

The next night she found herself fidgeting nervously outside a stage door behind the 43rd St Theatre; it was a chilly night, and Violet's fists were clenched for warmth in the pockets of her long overcoat. She had company: a small but inevitable crowd of autograph-seekers all clamoring for a sight of the lead actors, of which Link had not been one. In fact, she nearly didn't spot him emerging at all until he'd nearly reached the street.

"Link?" He didn't even turn; Violet dodged around the knot of hangers-on and jogged after him, grabbing for his arm to get his attention. " _Link._ Hey."

He turned on his heel. "Hey, I-- oh, _hi_ ," Link said, staring at her; his grin was blinding for half a second, before he seemed to remember that they hadn't parted on the best of terms and sobered a little. "I didn't think you were coming. You could've called," he added, a bit petulantly.

In retrospect-- well, Violet could have. "So could you."

"But that would've been easy." Link offered her his arm-- an oddly formal gesture even by Violet's standards, and oddly tentative by his. "So. Can we talk?"

Violet hesitated, but only for a moment-- after all, if she hadn't wanted to talk to Link, she would have stayed in Boston-- and tucked her hand into his elbow. "I think we'd better."

"So," Link said again, after a moment. "One of us has to say it first, so, uh. I'm really sorry." He glanced over at her, sheepish. "Even I know I can be a bit self-centered sometimes."

"Just a bit." They paused, waiting for a light to change, and Violet let a rueful smile slip before she could catch herself. "But I wasn't fair to you. I was pretty awful, actually," she added upon reflection. "And I'm really sorry about that."

"Yeah, well, I hear you've been having a rough time of it." Link nudged her forward again; Violet realized she'd been paying attention to his face, not the streetlight. In her defense, it was a pretty distracting face. "And if you don't want to tell me what it is, honestly, that's fine. I just want you-- all of you-- to be safe."

Violet's cheeks felt warm, but there was no way she was blushing; the street was really brightly lit, was all. "It's not that I don't trust you, you know. Because I do."

"Really? Cause that's not what you said before." The words were skeptical, but Link was all but beaming.

Violet leaned into him a little. It was worrying, actually, how easy this all felt. "Really. I'm sorry I said otherwise."

Link opened his mouth, closed it, and finally appeared to give in. "So what is it?"

"I just want _you_ safe." Violet squeezed his arm and wondered whether it even mattered, at this point.

"So." Link's eyebrows lifted hopefully. "We good?"

Violet nodded; the relief was surprisingly huge. "Excellent."

They walked along in silence for a few minutes. Violet didn't mind; she felt comfortable, for once, taking the opportunity to peer up at all the skyscrapers that had definitely not been there, or even dreamt of, the last time she'd been in New York. And she was perfectly happy to have Link quietly warm and solid against her side.

Quiet for a whole two minutes, that was-- which was probably the best Violet could expect of him-- until he started humming quietly and cheerfully. Another few bars and he was singing under his breath instead, something Violet didn't expect to recognize and certainly couldn't from the few words she could make out. Something about clowns.

And then something in the rhythm of his walk faltered, and Violet preemptively removed her hand from his arm, sidling a step or two away towards the nearest storefront. "Oh, no. Link, don't you dare."

"Dare what?" Link stopped in his tracks, did his absolute best to look innocent, and promptly ruined the effect by doing a few impromptu little dance steps and offering her his hand again. " _Don't bring a frown to old Broadway_ \--"

"You're absurd," Violet said resignedly, and perched on the railing running in front of the window, keeping her hands pointedly at her sides and trying not to laugh.

" _You've got a clown on old Broadway_ \--" He managed to give her a disappointed frown without skipping a beat or a step; Violet had to respect the talent that took, whatever exactly that talent was. " _Your troubles there, they're out of style--_ "

There didn't seem to be much hope of escape, so Violet just leaned back and let him work it out of his system; she was laughing too hard to try, in any case. For all that the whole situation was utterly ridiculous and other passers-by were giving them strange looks, she had missed this for the last week or so-- she had missed Link to rather an alarming degree, really. And she thought she might be getting sick of finding her own feelings alarming.

"You're a showoff," she called out, when she'd gotten her breath back enough to talk and realized that Link really did show no intention of stopping any time soon.

" _Broadway rhythm's got me_ \-- I am not." He danced a couple of steps closer and paused, eyebrows lifting hopefully. ". . . is it working?"

A yes, while unfortunately honest, didn't seem like it quite fit the situation. Instead Violet straightened up from the railing, tugging Link closer by the front of his coat and feeling momentarily smug at getting him to stumble for real this time, and kissed him firmly.

"Funny thing," he said when she was finished, "I could swear you told me you weren't interested."

"What I said was--" Between the adrenaline rush and Link's thumb stroking idly over the side of her neck, it was proving difficult for Violet to think entirely clearly. "I said that _if_ I were, it would be a bad idea."

"And?" Link was grinning back down at her, looking just a bit giddy himself; somewhere behind his head, a sign was flashing green and gold. The entire situation seemed more than a little surreal. "It's a good idea now?"

Violet leaned up to let him steal another quick kiss. "Like you told me," she said softly. "Might as well live a little."

"Seems you do like to live dangerously," Link murmured. There was an implied question there, but Violet chose to ignore it for the moment, and he didn't seem to mind.

It had been three years since she'd last heard from Quigley and almost four since he'd kissed her goodbye on a Norfolk dock-- and that wasn't counting time travel. If she was at least a little drunk on Link right now-- on the heat and closeness, and on the pleased little noise he made when she slipped her arms under his coat to hold him close-- well, Violet had earned a bit of shameless self-indulgence, hadn't she?

"About that," she answered eventually, breathless and reluctant to break the moment with serious business. "Link, you need to know some things."

Link was still smiling against her cheek; it was hard to be serious under the circumstances, and she didn't want to, but there were things that needed saying. "Vi, you don't have to--"

"But I _do_ ," she interrupted firmly; Link leaned away, though only just enough that she could look up and meet his eyes again. "I got you into this. It's only fair that I tell you what it is. In case you want out."

At that Link looked so abruptly and uncharacteristically grim that Violet was actually stunned into silence. "I wouldn't. Look, Vi." He let out a little puff of a sigh against her cheek. "This whole time travel thing, and whatever you're up to with my friends-- it's weird, I'm not gonna say it isn't, and I don't get it. But I won't ditch you, okay? Not this-- I just _won't_ ," he cut himself off.

Violet found his hand with one of hers and held on tight. "I don't want you hurt because of me," she admitted, and tried not to imagine the possibilities.

"Violet." Link swallowed hard-- standing this close, Violet could hear it next to her ear-- but tangled his fingers firmly with hers. "We already had this argument. I'm not going anywhere, okay?"

Reassured despite herself by Link's warm grip, she took in a slow breath and let it out again. "Okay," Violet echoed, finally. After all, for all she knew it wasn't even anything to do with Olaf; for all she knew nothing was wrong at all and for once she really was worrying too much. It was almost alarming, really, how contagious Link's optimism was.

Link took a step back, holding on to her hand and tugging her after him; Violet followed willingly, though she slid an arm back around his waist to lean in closer against his side. "Tell you what." His arm settled firmly over her shoulders, leading her back into motion and down the street. "I'll find a late-night place and buy you dinner, and you can tell me what kind of trouble you've gotten me into."

Violet leaned her head on his shoulder and let him guide her for the moment, feeling far more contented and optimistic than was probably justified. "Sounds like a deal."

\-------

"The thing is." Violet stole a French fry off Link's plate and tapped the end thoughtfully on the table between them. "I've been married once before. Well," she amended hastily, "not exactly."

Link snatched the fry back, glanced suspiciously between Violet and the tabletop, then shrugged and ate it anyway. "Yeah, you told me. You were engaged to a guy named Quigley, right?"

"No, before that." For lack of a fry Violet drummed nervous fingers on the table instead, until Link reached over to cover her hand with his. This was the kind of thing she didn't tell people unless they needed to know; unfortunately, for multiple reasons, Link did need to know. "When I was fourteen."

"When you were--" She could almost hear the gears of Link's brain grind to a halt as he stared at her. "What the hell happened?"

Violet looked down at their hands on the table, Link's fingers just beginning to wrap around hers, and then down at the remains of her sandwich. It was silly to be ashamed of this, she knew; it had been ten years ago, she hadn't had a _choice_ , and it wasn't even the strangest thing that had ever happened to her, but the memory still bothered her for some reason. "He was going to kill my sister, if I didn't." In retrospect, a sign of so many things to come.

"Guy must've really liked you, huh." Link's mouth twisted oddly.

"God, no. He hated me. And that was before I left him at the altar." Violet shrugged. "It's not hard to outsmart him, but it still hurts his pride. Every time. It's kind of sad, actually."

Link snorted in amusement, then paused and looked at her narrowly. "Wait. What do you mean, still?"

"We hurt his pride," Violet repeated tiredly. "Deeply and often. The man can really, really hold a grudge, Link-- you have no idea. He killed our parents, he's been trying to kill us ever since, and he takes the fact that we're still alive as a personal insult."

"He killed your-- oh, Christ." Link ground the heel of his free hand into his eye. "Look, you know this guy-- what's his name?"

"Count Olaf," Violet filled in. "Though he wouldn't actually be a Count any more."

"Count Olaf, right. I don't, he sounds like a complete asshole-- but you've _time-travelled into the future_ and you think he's still here coming after you?" Link paused for a moment, mouth still half-open, like he'd just now processed what was coming out of his own mouth. "Oh God," he went on, more faintly, "my life."

"Says the man who just did a song-and-dance routine for me in the middle of the street." The dig was irresistible, but it at least got Link to relax a little. "But yes, I think he's here. Or someone working for him."

"Right, right, okay." Link gestured for her to go on. "What's got you so shaken up?"

"Because I didn't invent that time machine-- though I wish I had-- I found it." Violet went back to contemplating the last few bites of her sandwich-- not that she actually wanted the rest of it, she was just trying to ignore how ridiculous her life sounded even to her own ears. "It landed in the middle of a street in Boston, back in the time I come from, and the cockpit had this big glass dome--" she sketched the outline of it out with her free hand-- "decorated with a giant eye. Just like Count Olaf used to have all over his house. And as a tattoo, even."

"It could be a coincidence," Link offered hopefully.

"I wish," said Violet, who hadn't believed in coincidence in at least ten years. "It landed behind our house. So I had a look at the controls and tried to take it back where it had come from, but I crashed in your basement, a few miles off and about six weeks early."

Link went cross-eyed for a minute trying to sort this all out. Frankly, Violet didn't blame him. "But you've been living in my house almost six weeks already. So what the hell's going to happen?"

"I wish I knew." Violet realized that she'd turned her hand under his and was holding on tightly, probably too tightly; she forced herself to loosen her grip and offer him a weak smile instead. "See, that's what kind of trouble I've gotten you into."

"Oh, Christ," Link said again, eyes still not quite focusing for another moment, but then his gaze met hers. "Well, if you're right I guess this should be exciting, anyway."

Violet eyed him carefully. "Still with me?"

Link nodded-- slowly, but without hesitation. "Absolutely."

"Good." It was a strange relief, not to feel alone in this-- but Violet was also exhausted, and she looked around half-heartedly for a clock. "I should-- I need to get back to my hotel. Work to do tomorrow. So do you," she remembered, a little disjointedly.

Link frowned. "Want me to call a cab? You probably shouldn't walk, this late."

It was strange, settling back into mundanity like this-- strange, but comforting. Violet couldn't even remember the last time her world had felt as sane as it did with Link in it. "Could you? I think I saw a phone booth out there-- I'll pay and be right out."

"Okay. See you in a minute?" Link collected his jacket and slid out of the booth without waiting for Violet to answer, but his hand slid over her shoulder as he passed her heading towards the door.

She exited the diner a couple of minutes later just as Link hung up the pay phone and emerged from the booth, hands balled up in his coat pockets for warmth. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, they're gonna send a taxi to pick you up in ten, fifteen minutes." Link wandered over to her, half-grinning hopefully. "Which I guess means I have to keep you busy till then."

"You're really not as subtle as you think you are," Violet informed him, but she couldn't help grinning back (like a complete idiot, she suspected) and looping her arms around his neck anyway.

She couldn't help envying him, this man who lived in a brightly-colored Broadway world of song and hope and happy endings; it was a worldview Violet barely even understood, but at that moment she would have given just about anything to let Link stay in it. Or to join him there.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the way _her_ world worked.

 _I won't let him touch you_ , she wanted to say. _I won't let him hurt you, I'll do anything_ \-- but it was so hard to be really worried when she was busy being this happy. It was an undeniable thrill after weeks of growing attraction to act on it, just like that, and find that Link returned her interest; to let him press her up against a wall and kiss her giddy; to explore the leanly muscled lines of his shoulders and back through his shirt and not care who saw.

Violet could get used to this decade. She really could.

"You're so beautiful." Link pressed his mouth to her jaw, not exactly a kiss, and lingered there for a minute. His voice was a tangible hum against her skin, making Violet tighten her grip on his shirt and shiver a little for reasons entirely unrelated to the March chill. "God, Vi."

"And you're very handsome. Which I know you know--" she couldn't resist adding, and Link snorted muffled laughter into her neck-- "but you've got very nice eyes and I love your smile, and--" She honestly wasn't sure what to say, but at least he couldn't see how deeply she knew she was blushing. "And I'm very glad you're here with me."

"I'm glad, too." He hugged her tightly, smelling of leather and sweat and slightly too much cologne.

After another few minutes, a horn honked in the street; Violet peered over Link's shoulder. "I think that's my taxi," she said regretfully, and started to pull away. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah-- hey." He caught her hand as she was about to step off the sidewalk; Violet half-turned back towards him. "You never said how you liked the show."

"I don't know," she admitted, and Link's forehead creased in confusion. "I was too busy watching you." She hadn't understood half of it, anyway, but that was beside the point.

"Oh-- _oh._ " Link looked somewhere between pleased and shellshocked. "Good enough for me." He lifted her hand, kissed it-- Violet was never going to get used to that, but she wasn't complaining-- and finally let go. "See you tomorrow."

"Goodnight." Violet pulled her hand back, feeling suddenly bereft without the physical contact, and the cabbie honked at her again.

Once inside the taxi, she was momentarily distracted by trying to remember the name of her hotel and give it to the driver; when Violet looked back out the window, Link was already walking back towards the theater. He didn't look back at the cab, but out of nowhere he danced a few cheerful steps, looking very odd with his hands shoved in his coat pockets, and then he wandered around a corner and out of sight.

\-------

A few mornings later, Penny and Seaweed were waiting on the front steps of Violet's hotel; or rather, Seaweed was waiting on the front steps, and Penny was hovering a couple of storefronts down the sidewalk, near a phone booth marked OUT OF ORDER. "Morning," he said, indecently cheerful-- all of Link's friends seemed to be indecently cheerful. It made Violet wonder what they were putting in the water in Baltimore these days. "I hear you came here to get actual work done. Feel like doing some of that today?"

"Morning." Violet nursed at the coffee she'd bought in the lobby. She was pretty sure she hadn't been this dependent on coffee six weeks ago; that was probably Link's fault, too, much like her own inclination to be indecently cheerful. This really wouldn't do. "Have you found anything out?"

"Yup," Seaweed said readily, and totally failed to elaborate. "Have you talked to Link yet?"

"At great length. Everything's fine now." Violet tried her best to be serious, but immediately ruined it by ducking her head and (she suspected) blushing as they turned to head towards Penny and the phone booth she seemed to be staking out. "Better than fine, actually."

"See, I told you, he's not such a bad guy." Seaweed rolled his shoulders idly. "He just needs a kick in the pants sometimes. Or five."

Violet looked suspiciously at him over the rim of her coffee cup-- then over at Penny, who had moved up to join them. "A kick in the pants? Did one of you have anything to do with that?"

"Perish the _thought_ ," Penny said archly, at the same time Seaweed started to say "Don't look at me," and they both dissolved into laughter; Violet waited it out, patiently.

"Whoever's doing it was," she said at last, "thank you."

"Well." Penny glanced between her and Seaweed and then, more narrowly, at the phone booth behind her. "Deep inside, my fourteen-year-old self is actually pretty jealous of you-- _really_ deep inside," she clarified hastily, when her husband began to look offended-- "but that deadline you gave us is less than twelve hours away."

Seaweed still looked indignant, though whether at Penny or herself Violet didn't really want to guess. "And while you've been partying it up with our old buddy Link, we've been trying to find out what happened to _your_ old buddy Count Olaf."

Violet glanced around at the people passing them by, though it probably wasn't going to do much good; it was eight-thirty in the morning, so there were a lot of passers-by, and while it didn't look like anyone was eavesdropping she wasn't sure she'd be able to tell in these crowds anyway. "And you said you'd found something out?"

"Lots of things," Penny corrected smugly, leaning in conspiratorially close. "See, no one's heard from him since the New Deal. He just dropped off the face of the Earth."

Seaweed shrugged. "Can't say I blame him. I wouldn't want to be a bad guy any more either, if I didn't get a cool title. So far's anyone can tell, he didn't make any trouble after that. Didn't get married, have kids, nothing."

"Also not surprising." Penny's nose wrinkled in disgust at the thought. "But he did have family-- two brothers and a sister, generally not quite as slimy as him. And therefore-- nieces and nephews."

"Wonderful." Violet considered this, coffee forgotten. "Does anyone know where they are?"

"All over the place." Seaweed gestured widely to demonstrate. "But there's one guy, a nephew, he lives up in the north suburbs of Boston near where the-- where your parents' house was, and the neighbors haven't seen him in going on a week."

Violet pursed her lips. "So where is he?"

"We're--" As if in response, the pay phone they'd been hovering near rang, and Penny skittered into it, followed by the eyes of a few briefly interested passers-by. Violet eyed them right back, and they hurried on past.

"We were," Seaweed continued smoothly on her behalf, "just waiting to find that out."

"Thank you." Violet glanced at him, but she was distracted watching Penny on the phone. She didn't think she liked the looks of the other woman's expression. "For everything, seriously. Being here has been--" there wasn't even a word to cover it, honestly. "Strange."

"Hey, no problem." Seaweed spread his hands and grinned. "Anything for a legend."

"A legend?" Violet eyed him doubtfully, but that train of inquiry was derailed by Penny's return.

"This is bad," she said. "This is-- he's in New York right now. He's got rooms at three separate hotels, don't know which one he's actually using."

Violet looked over at the clock on the front of the bank across the street. They had more than ten hours until the time machine got sent back. That was _plenty_ of time. "What hotels?"

"The Hamilton Court, room 619." Penny ticked them off on her fingers. "Manchester Inn, room 1140. Um. Pantheon Suites, room 126."

"Wait." Violet stared at her. "But Link's at the Manchester."

"Yeah, he always-- oh." Seaweed groaned. "Oh, _hell_."

"It might be a decoy," Violet said, without much hope. "He bought extra rooms, he knew we were going to look for him. Of course he'd get a room there, as a distraction."

Penny bit her lip. "Point. We'll check out the others, you go check on your boyfriend."

"Yeah, I'll--" Just this once, Violet decided. Just this once, nobody was going to get hurt because of her. "I'll be in touch." She lobbed her coffee cup in the general direction of a trash can and ran to hail a cab.

\-------

All things considered, Link was having a good week. A _great_ week, even. And this was a great morning. Even though he'd overslept and room service had gotten his order wrong and the grape jelly he hadn't ordered had stained his favorite t-shirt, it was still a great morning, because he was going to go have lunch with Violet and then they were going to go be tourists some more, as if he hadn't been working in this city since he was eighteen. Being tourists was probably going to involve a lot of making out, but Link figured that was a reasonable price to pay.

He was having such a good day, despite the day not having properly started yet, that he found himself rocking idly back and forth on his heels and humming while he waited for the elevator down. There was already someone else waiting there, a fussy-looking man in a suit who kept giving Link annoyed little glances; Link offered him a shrug and an apologetic grin and did his best not to hum, but it was difficult.

The elevator arrived with its usual _ding_ , and Link waved the other man in first; by way of thanks he got a thin sour smile and-- the moment the doors closed on them-- something uncomfortably hard and cold shoved into the small of his back. Having never even seen a gun outside a police holster, it took Link a few seconds to put it together, and then he froze. "Look, I don't have that much cash on me."

"I don't care about your money." The older man reached around him and pushed the button for the eleventh floor. "You, however, are going to come in very handy."

The correct response to this situation was probably to say something clever, beat the guy up, and then escape; that was what Dirty Harry would have done, anyway. Or Violet, who could probably have managed it even without violence. Link, however, couldn't think of anything to say at all, so he stayed quiet and let himself be numbly guided down the hallway to room 1140.

The man reached around him again to test the knob, and the door swung open easily; it had been left unlocked. "Just as I expected," he announced to the room at large, shoving Link in and latching the door behind them.

Violet looked up in surprise from where she was rummaging through the desk and went very still. "Link," she said after a moment, for some reason ignoring the presence of a man with a _gun_. "Are you okay?"

"I don't know," Link said, probably more honestly than he should have. "Am I?"

"You'll be fine." Violet's voice was even and her face was blank, but she was gripping the back of the chair next to her awfully tightly. Link suspected that if he'd noticed that, the guy behind him would too. "And who are _you_?"

"Why, don't you recognize me?" The man now standing beside Link gave her a mocking little bow. "Count Olaf at your service, little miss Baudelaire."

"You are _not_." Violet seemed dangerously close to laughter for a moment. Link felt that was profoundly inappropriate, under the circumstances where there was a gun jammed in his kidney, but then again she had far more experience with this kind of thing than he did. "You're his nephew, and definitely not a Count. There are no Counts any more."

"A mere legislative error," Olaf said dismissively. "Soon to be corrected, with your help."

Violet folded her arms across her chest and nodded to Link. "In exchange for his safety?"

"Of course." Link was getting to hate the sound of Olaf's voice already. "That _is_ the usual arrangement."

"So it is," Violet said tiredly, and nodded. "So what is it you need my help with?"

"Wait," someone blurted, and after a few seconds Link realized it had been him and that Violet and Olaf were both staring at him. "Look, you guys have a thing, I don't even know, and I'm just the hostage here, but that's it? We're just going quietly?"

"The alternative is you getting shot," Violet pointed out. "Just stay calm, okay?"

"Not necessarily." Either Link had just had an idea, or he was panicking; he wasn't quite sure, but he felt the need to do _something_ , and there was at least one thing he knew he was good for.

"I wouldn't--" Violet and Olaf both began, her hasty and him bored, but Link was already moving-- twisting away from the gun at his back and trying to reach around and grab it from Olaf's hand. Just like dancing, easy as cake-- until the gun cracked down on his head instead, the floor somehow smashed into his face, and things went pretty dark for a while.

\-------

Link was having a completely terrible day, so far. He seemed to have fallen asleep sitting up for some reason, his head was pounding miserably, and someone was shaking him violently; also, he couldn't move his arms. He opened his eyes and discovered he was strapped into the back seat of a car that was bumping its way up the side of a hill, he was pretty sure he remembered being held at gunpoint and whacked over the head, and-- yup, his wrists were tied behind his back.

"Hey," Violet murmured; she was sitting next to him with, Link noted sulkily, her hands free to reach over and help him sit up. "How're you feeling?"

"Awful." Link groaned and leaned on her a little. "What'd I miss?"

"Not much. I think we're back in Boston. He said we'd see for ourselves." She slid her hand into his, voice lowering still further, and it was enough to make Link start to feel better. "Just trust me, okay? I'm going to deal with this and get us out. I promise."

Link squeezed her hand as best he could, under the circumstances. "I think I'm done being helpful for now, don't worry."

"Quiet," Olaf snapped from the driver's seat. "We're here."

The car turned, and Link heard the crunch of gravel under the tires; he sat up straighter and had a look out the windows. If this was still Boston, he concluded, it was only in name. They were rattling up a long winding drive, with things that sort of resembled trees growing along it-- and at the end was the only house in sight, a large rickety wooden building that despite having the normal complement of doors and windows in the usual sizes looked more like a barn than anything. A really ominous, rickety barn, and when they pulled up outside the door Link could peer up to see that there were a whole lot of power lines running to it. "Nice place." God, his head hurt. He wondered whether there was an actual lump there, like people in cartoons got; it sure felt like there should be.

"I'm glad you approve," Olaf said sourly, and jerked the back door open on Violet's side to point the gun into the car at them both. "Single file, if you please."

The inside of the building was even more barnlike-- possibly because someone had knocked out most of the walls and ceilings, turning most of it into one huge open space filled with heaps of tools and mechanical things Link couldn't even begin to name. There was something unexpectedly familiar about the place, and after a minute of gaping it occurred to Link that this was essentially what Violet had turned his basement into, only a dozen times bigger. And hulking in the center of the room was even a machine that looked alarmingly similar to the one he'd been watching her assemble for weeks. Even down to the enormous eye decorating its glass dome.

"Wonderful." Violet peered around the place critically, then looked back to Olaf. "It looks like you're doing just fine without me. What do you want my help for?"

His lip curled. "It doesn't work. I've followed your blueprints to the letter--"

" _My_ blueprints?" Violet blurted. "But--" She bit her lip and went quiet without explaining further.

"Well, of course." Olaf eyed her oddly. "The point is, your machine here doesn't work, so fix it or I shoot this--" he waved at Link-- "person you're inexplicably fond of. Get it working, I let you both go about your lives for the moment while I go back in time and help my uncle hold on to the title he so richly deserves. Any questions?"

"I think you're insane," Link announced weakly. It wasn't a question, but it was what people in the movies generally said at this point.

"My genius is so misunderstood," Olaf complained, with no trace of irony whatsoever. "Now sit down-- no, over there so I can stay by the radiator-- and shut _up_ for once in your silly little life."

Which was how Link ended up sitting against the wall for the next however long-- few hours, probably-- doing nothing whatsoever. Sometimes he hummed to keep himself awake, until Olaf snapped at him or prodded him in the head with the gun barrel just in case Link had forgotten what the deal was; sometimes he started feeling sick and shaky from worry or his head hurting or both, and had to hang his head down between his knees until it passed. Mostly he leaned the least painful bits of his head against the wall and watched Violet work. He'd liked watching her at home, too, but generally she ended up shooing him back upstairs because it distracted her having to work around him. Right now, though, that didn't seem to be an issue at all; she was bustling around the machine, peering inside and tweaking things quietly and efficiently with only an occasional pause to ask Olaf where to find something. Every so often she'd glance over to Link and give him what was probably meant to be a reassuring smile, and he'd offer a nod in return. Yup, still alive, still going to get shot in the head if she messed this up-- not that he expected her to, but he really would've felt much better without the whole getting-shot thing even on the table.

But it was comforting anyway, watching her work on the thing. Seeing Violet quietly confident and in her element. It felt weirdly like home, Olaf and gun and head wound and all.

"What time is it?" she asked after a while, looking over at them. Link peered back at her; he was still feeling pretty fuzzy around the edges, but something seemed off. Even across the room, Violet seemed more focused on him and Olaf-- as opposed to the machine-- than she had in hours. She seemed tenser, even, like something serious was riding on knowing what time it is. Something, Link dearly hoped, was up.

"The time?" Olaf patted down his pockets, grimaced, and only then looked back at her suspiciously. "What do you need that for?"

"Just to make a last few calibrations. _Important_ calibrations, if you want to make it whenever you're going alive." Violet spread her hands, all wide-eyed innocence that wouldn't have convinced even a small child. "You locked the doors, it'll only take a few seconds, it's not like we're going anywhere."

Olaf, of course, fell for it immediately. "I'll be right back," he conceded grumpily. "Remember, there's nowhere for you to run to," and sidled out down a hallway.

"Oh thank God," Link said, as soon as--possibly before-- Olaf was out of earshot. "I am getting so sick of him."

"Well, lucky for you I've got an idea, then." Violet looked around nervously. "Just distract him, okay? That's all I need."

"But what--" Link began, but footsteps were coming back already, and Violet just gulped and didn't answer.

"It's 3:56," Olaf announced, suddenly reappearing in the doorway with a pocket watch in his hand. "Happy now?"

"Very." Violet vanished inside the machine for a few more minutes, while Link waited and fidgeted, unsure whether he was supposed to be providing a distraction just yet. Shortly she reappeared, though, sticking her head out of the cockpit and giving him what he hoped was a meaningful glance.

Link winked back at her and she smiled; good enough. "Um." He cleared his throat, which sorely needed it anyway.

"What now?" Olaf rounded on him irritably.

If this had been an actual audition, Link would've been sunk feeling like this much shit; as it was, all he had to do was save both their lives. Like a walk in the park, really, so he opened his mouth and went with the first thing that popped into his head. " _A little less conversation, a little more action, please! All this aggravation ain't satisfactioning me!_ "

Olaf stared at him with an expression that slid swiftly from astonishment into outright hatred. Across the room Violet had clapped a hand over her mouth and was shaking with laughter, which generally counted as an automatic success in Link's book, but they also had an escape to make here and it relieved him immensely when, halfway through the first verse, she composed herself and vanished back into the machine to do whatever she was going to do.

"Shut up," Olaf snapped, glaring fiercely and completely failing to notice whatever little mechanical thing was now zipping around him. Or, for that matter, that the time machine behind him was starting to fade out of sight with an increasingly loud and irritating whine.

Link glared right back up at him and sang louder, not so much to drown out the noise as because this man clearly had no taste in music. " _A little more bite and a little less bark, a little less fight and--_ "

Olaf suddenly remembered the gun shoved into his belt and pulled it out. "I said, shut up," he snapped, and Link did before he could think better of it. The machine had vanished already, in any case, and Violet was crossing the room towards them.

"I'd drop that." She wasn't laughing any more. Not even remotely.

"Or what?" Olaf tried to turn to face her and tripped instead, stumbling and flailing like he'd gotten tangled up in something-- fishing line, Link realized, squinting to make it out. The gun fell from his hand and skittered away on the floor.

"Or nothing." She shrugged, and Link decided that if one of them was Dirty Harry it certainly wasn't _him_. "I wasn't asking."

"You can't do this to me." Olaf struggled a little, experimentally, which as far as Link could tell only made his situation worse.

"Please." Violet moved forward, right past Link, who stared openly; he'd never seen her like this, stiff and furious, and he wasn't sure what to make of it. "Who do you think I am?"

Olaf tried to take a step away from her, only entangled himself worse, and fell backwards. He propped himself up on one elbow, still sneering up at her. "You're a spoiled brat with no respect for your betters, is what you are."

"Is that what he told you?" Violet crouched down between them, facing away from Link so that he couldn't see her expression, and contemplated the man sprawled out on the floor. "Did he tell you how sorry I could make you for this?"

"You won't hurt me, little girl. You don't have the guts." Olaf's sneer was still firmly fixed in place, but his eyes flickered nervously between them. Link gave a noncommital shrug in response; he was almost certain Violet wasn't going to beat the guy up, but he didn't plan to have a load of sympathy for him if she did.

"I don't have to hurt you." Violet's voice was as soft as always, almost casual; even Link, if he hadn't known her so well, might have missed the thread of steel in her tone. "Any of my family could take you single-handed. But him?" She nodded towards Link, still not actually looking at him. "He's _my_ business. My responsibility. My--" she choked off a noise of frustration, and then her voice was light again. "I could make your life hell, if I wanted to. If there's one thing your uncle taught me, it's how to ruin lives."

"I'd like to see you try." Olaf's entire face screwed up, and he squirmed around to try and aim a kick at Violet's shins; in the process, however, his own head whacked into a nearby piece of scrap metal. "I hate you," he added blearily after a moment, sounding for all the world as if this were a new and surprising revelation; then his eyes slid closed and he went limp on the floor.

"We-ell." Violet blinked down at him, hands on her hips. "That was easy."

"Oh, God." Link groaned and slumped back against the wall in relief-- and then yelped and slumped forward again instead as the impact sent new and exciting kinds of pain throbbing through his skull. His head was pounding near-unbearably and he was sore all over; what he really wanted at this point was to just go take a nice long nap, but Link was pretty sure that wasn't supposed to mix well with head injuries. Or with having the guy who'd inflicted them tied up unconscious on the floor.

"Link--" Violet was already scrambling to his side with entirely unladylike haste to kneel on the floor next to him. Link leaned forward a little further to let her undo the knots around his wrists; in a few seconds he felt the scratchy rope pull away from his skin and flexed his fingers gratefully. Violet was peering at him closely, reaching up to run careful fingers along what felt like a nasty bruise on Link's cheekbone. "Are you all right?"

"I'll live." At this point Link figured he'd earned the right to abandon his dignity for a little while, but first he offered the best semblance of a grin he could manage, doing his best to soothe the anxious tremor in Violet's voice. "Don't tell me you were worried, Vi."

Violet made a noise that Link sincerely hoped was a stifled laugh; it was close enough that he felt entitled to sag forward and bury his face in her shoulder, bruises and all. She smelled comfortingly familiar and greasy. "Of course not." She tugged him in a bit closer, other arm wrapping snugly around him, and Link was happy to shift accordingly. "It isn't like you've injured anything you were using today anyway."

"I was using my _face_ ," Link informed her, in what was quite possibly the worst attempt at indignation he'd ever made, and decided his head was hurting too badly to come up with anything wittier.

"We have to call someone," Violet pointed out quietly after another moment, though she didn't seem inclined to pull away. "And you need a doctor."

Link nodded against her shoulder and immediately regretted it as his head began throbbing all over again. "Yeah, yeah we should. But." At least one of them was shaking and couldn't seem to stop. "Vi. God, oh god, _Violet_."

"Shhh, I know." Violet pressed her face against the top of his head, and Link tightened his arm around her waist. They were together. They were fine. (Well, sort of.) Everything was going to be fine.

"I'm not silly," Link said, after a little while. It seemed important to reaffirm this. "I used to be a star on local daytime TV."

"I know. You're a very important man." She was probably trying to be sarcastic, but it sure didn't sound like Violet was trying very hard.

\-------

"I look like an idiot, don't I." Link prodded gingerly at the bandage on the side of his head, winced, and then lowered his hand with a seeming effort. "Yeah, I know, don't tell me, I shouldn't fiddle with it."

Violet tilted her head and folded her arms, considering carefully. "It's not that bad. And I'm sure the hair they cut off there will grow back in no time."

"They _what_ \--" Link's eyes went wide with alarm for a moment, but Violet couldn't keep a straight face for long, and he grimaced at her. "Don't do that, Vi, not after the day we've had. It doesn't really suit you, anyway."

"Sorry." Violet let the curtain fall shut behind her as she moved closer to the hospital cot where he was sitting. "How're you feeling?"

"Well, I don't feel sick any more," Link said optimistically. "The doctor said I need to hang here a few more hours, and then she's sending me home with some pain pills." His hands settled lightly on her hips. "Also, someone needs to look after me for a couple days."

"Oh, really." Violet stepped closer still, bracing both her hands on his knees. "And where are you going to find someone to do that?"

"I know people," Link said vaguely.

"Good enough." Violet abandoned conversation for the moment in favor of leaning in and kissing him; Link all but sagged against her, returning the kiss with more than a little bit of a desperate edge. "I'm sorry," she said quietly, getting the message loud and clear. "I promised you weren't going to get hurt."

Link shook his head, fingers gripping her hip a little tighter. "I thought he was going to hurt you," he corrected, shoulders slumping visibly. "I don't think I was much help, though. You were right, it was pretty dumb of me."

"It was not," Violet protested automatically, and kissed Link's temple, curling her fingers against his unbruised cheekbone. "You did fine," she says firmly. "You were the best help I could ask for."

"Oh. So just as expected, then." Link brightened almost immediately, back straightening again, and Violet fell in love with him, just like that; it wasn't as if she'd had very far left to fall. It didn't feel like much, just a little hiccup in her chest-- and yet it was the hugest thing in the world.

"Link," she began, with no idea what to say but the desperate urge to say something-- but before she could put words to something really irretrievable, there was a rustle behind her, and she startled and turned around in Link's arms.

"Sorry." Penny edged a little further around the curtain, despite the apology. "We didn't mean to interrupt something--" sure enough, Seaweed was hovering behind her-- "we just wanted to see if you were okay."

"Hey, guys." Link offered a tired thumbs-up by way of greeting.

Violet tried to find a slightly more appropriate place to stand without actually getting much further away from him, and ended up just sitting down on the cot next to him. "He'll be fine," she filled in helpfully

\-------

Something was pretty obviously up. They didn't talk about it the rest of the evening Link spent in the hospital, or on the T ride home, or in the next couple of days while he was recovering-- but Link was the only remaining reason for Violet to be here, and he knew he wasn't sufficient reason on his own. It was just that Violet didn't seem to want to be the one to bring it up, though it was clearly on her mind, and Link didn't feel well enough to deal with it just yet in any case.

The third night after he got home from the hospital, he finally managed a full night's sleep, and it was such a pleasant surprise that he slept in as long as he could possibly manage. When he finally dragged himself downstairs, around lunchtime the next day, he was mildly startled to find Violet seemingly mesmerized by the television. "Afternoon," he greeted, and wandered behind the sofa to look over her shoulder.

"Hey." She tilted her head back to peer up at him. "How's your head?"

Link ducked it and kissed her, smiling against Violet's mouth when she hummed happily and leaned up into it. "Much better now," he concluded.

"Whatever helps." Violet smiled back up at him, sheepishly. "I'm sorry you got hurt."

"I'm not," Link countered, because he wasn't and because she'd apologized to him five times already, and leaned over a little further. " _I'd rather be blue thinking of you, I'd rather be blue over you, than happy with somebody else-- I'm crazy about ya, without ya--_ "

"Link," Violet began warningly-- her tone was far more affectionate than actually annoyed, same as ever, but even upside-down there was something genuinely unhappy in her expression that shut Link up in a hurry.

"That's okay, I don't think I could hit the same high notes as her anyway." He perched on the sofa arm, watching Violet for a moment and trying not to draw the obvious conclusion. "So what's on?"

"Haven't you heard?" It was like magic, the way Violet brightened up, and Link couldn't quite help being far more interested in seeing her happy full stop than in why. "They're sending men up to walk on the moon."

"Oh yeah, I saw that in the papers." For the first time since he'd come downstairs, Link bothered to pay attention to the television instead of to her, and sure enough recognized the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. "What is this, the fifth or sixth time now?"

"Maybe, but still." Violet gestured emphatically. "The _moon_ , Link. Think about it."

Link thought about it, for the first time in years, and he had to admit-- it really was pretty cool. "Isn't the future great?"

"It is." Violet gave him another smile, but it didn't quite reach her eyes this time. "It really is."

Link stared a little blankly at the TV screen, where some astronaut's wife was telling a reporter all about how brave her husband was, and decided he'd better not postpone the inevitable any longer. ". . . so when're you leaving?"

"Soon. Really soon." Violet leaned against his side, and Link slipped an arm around her shoulders without thinking; when he glanced down, though, he wasn't surprised to see that she didn't seem to want to look at him either. "Today. After this, I think."

Knowing had been one thing; having a clear deadline, and one so close, was something totally different. "Today?" Link swallowed hard. "Not even-- you couldn't wait one more day?"

"I could," Violet admitted. "But the longer I wait, the harder it'll be."

"And you can't stay." Link stroked her arm and watched the countdown dazedly. "I know."

\-------

For a good few minutes, Violet could hear Link rummaging around in the kitchen overhead. She took the opportunity to lean over into the cockpit of her time machine and start warming up the engine; she didn't trust that she would have the resolve to do it once he followed her downstairs.

She was leaning against the side of the machine, waiting with arms folded, by the time Link appeared-- descending the stairs not in his usual hasty clatter of boot heels, but almost hesitantly, keeping a wary eye on the machine as it began to emit a low hum. Violet didn't blame him for his hesitation; she wasn't exactly in a hurry to say her goodbyes either.

"Hey, I, uh, I got you something." Link opened his hand to her as he crossed the room, something small glinting in his palm, and when he'd nearly reached her Violet realized it was a key. "I meant to get it sooner so you could _use_ it, but there was this thing with the locksmith and anyway—" he smiled sheepishly— "here, it's the front door key to my house."

"Better late than never." Violet found herself returning his smile as best she could, despite the awful knots her insides were in. She reached out, meaning to accept the key from him, and ended up holding onto his hand and tugging him closer instead. "Thank you," she added, and because she couldn't quite bear to meet Link's eyes for the moment she curled her fingers around the key and looked down instead, finding the spare hair ribbon at her waist so she could thread it through the key ring.

Link's hands covered hers— which, Violet realized, were shaking. "Here. Vi, just let me—" he murmured, fingers steady but voice not at all as he tied the ribbon around her neck. "Okay, there," and then left his hand there warm and heavy on her shoulder, thumb pressing the key briefly against the hollow of her throat.

"Link--" She knew there had to be the right words somewhere, something she could say to get that hollow awful look out of his eyes, but she just couldn't seem to find them. "Oh _damn_ it," she blurted, helpless and frustrated, and Link laughed-- though he didn't look any happier for it.

"It's gonna be weird," he said quietly, and glanced nervously over her shoulder as the machine's hum grew steadily louder. "Not having you here."

Violet sucked in a long, shuddering breath and held on tight as Link's hands slid around her waist. "It's okay," she insisted, burying her face in his neck. "I promise. Everything's going to be okay." Never mind that living here had been the first time in ten years she'd even been in eyeshot of okay; if there was one lie she had a lot of practice at telling, this was it.

"Yeah. Sure." Link kissed her hair; he didn't sound convinced, let alone comforted. "Just promise me you'll look after yourself. Please?"

"I do my best," Violet managed, through the steadily tightening ache in her chest, and-- finding that words were failing her-- went up on her toes to kiss him. Link made an unhappy little noise, more like a hiccup than anything, and kissed back urgently for a long while.

Behind her, the machine's shrill vibrato kicked back down into a steady hum; Link glanced at it, then back at her, lips pressed thin. "Time to go?"

Violet inhaled, slowly; it took a few seconds' conscious effort for her to answer. "Time to go." Or she wouldn't be able to bring herself to.

"Oh." Link opened and closed his mouth once or twice. When he finally managed a "Vi," he sounded so suddenly small and broken that instead of pulling away she latched on tighter for a minute, face pressed into his shoulder.

"You really ought to move back," she went on finally, with a great effort. "I don't know if it's safe."

Link didn't move a muscle. "How far back?"

"Far enough that you can't take any flying leaps. Or burst into song again." Violet patted his chest, gently, and smiled at the guilty expression that flickered over Link's face. "Or whatever you were thinking of doing. It's a bad idea, I promise."

The last thing she saw through the glass of the cockpit was Link watching her intently from the stairs, gripping the banister tightly. And then, for a few moments, she was nowhere at all.

\-------

"Oh, come on, she's right," Link said aloud to his empty basement, not sounding nearly as much like his dad as he would've liked. "That whole life-and-death cloak-and-dagger thing, that was never your gig anyway. You've got better things to worry about. It's all for the best, seriously."

He sat there in silence for a few minutes, until the quiet began to feel oppressive, and then tried singing: " _While you're away, I'm here to say there'll be no iceman here-- singin' the blues, I'm gonna use nothing but Frigidaire--_ " but that didn't seem to help either, so he cleared his throat uncomfortably and stopped again.

Violet wasn't coming back, he knew; it wouldn't be right, if she did. She had a better place to be, and better reason to be there.

Link stayed seated on the basement stairs a good while longer, though, jumping hopefully at every creak and every imagined movement at the corner of his eye. Just in case.

\-------

When Violet found herself again, she turned out to be in the parlor of her cousins' house; it was early afternoon here too, and sunlight was streaming in through the tall windows that looked out on the back garden. One of them was covered in brown paper, and there were suspicious singe marks on a couple of armchairs, but nothing seemed to have gone too seriously awry since she'd last been home.

There was no one else around besides her; Violet listened carefully as she climbed out of the machine, but the clank of the hatch falling closed again behind her was the only noise. "Klaus?" she called out, gathering her wits and wandering out into the hallway, towards the stairs. "Sunny? Cousin Angela?"

Still there was no response-- there were half a dozen bats roosting . All the same pictures were hanging on the wall by the stairs, so the house clearly hadn't changed hands, even if all the glass on them was broken or missing now. Up the stairs Violet went, with no sound still except the click of her own heels on the wood floor-- and there, a rustle from the study down the hall.

The study door was open, so Violet slipped inside without announcing herself. Her brother was nearly a foot taller than her; it wasn't exactly difficult to spot him at a desk across the room, hunched over and taking furious notes on something or other. By all appearances, he'd been too distracted to hear anything at all, and the thick rug made it all too easy for Violet to cross the room to him without making any more noise. "You never change," she said quietly, right next to Klaus's ear.

Klaus yelped and shot to his feet, glasses falling down his nose. Violet had to jump back hastily to avoid being hit in the legs as his chair toppled backwards. "What-- Violet," he said, exasperated, and then caught himself and stared. "Oh my god, _Violet_ ," he said again, and gathered her up into a tight hug. "We were just starting to worry."

"Just starting?" Violet squeezed him back, pressing her cheek against his shirt. "How long's it been? Where is everyone?"

"A month, almost." Klaus rested his chin on her head for a moment before pulling away. "Cousin Henry's 'on vacation' again, Cousin Angela dragged Sunny out shopping-- Violet, where have you _been_?"

"1972. I'll tell you about it sometime, okay?" Violet pulled his chair upright and sat down in it herself, feeling dazed and blurry.

Klaus shoved his glasses back up on his nose, jammed his hands in his pockets, and frowned down at her. "Are you all right?"

It was a question worthy of serious consideration, so Violet gave it some. On the one hand, she was home, somewhere snug and familiar where her family was safely here to greet her. On the other hand-- on the other hand, the key to Link's house was hanging around her neck, still so fresh out of his kitchen drawer that if Violet tried she could imagine it still felt a bit cool against her skin.

She wasn't going to wonder what Link was doing with himself, now she'd left. It didn't matter. He hadn't even been born yet.

"I'm tired," she concluded, chest aching and voice suddenly shaky. "Klaus, I'm _so tired_ ," and after hours of trying to restrain herself, finally burst into tears.

\-------

The next day was almost terrifyingly quiet: nothing exploded, no one tried to kill anyone else, and the laws of physics remained firmly intact. Link, who had never been fond of quiet under the best of circumstances, hated it.

He wandered around the house in a daze, picked up the phone two or three times to find out whether Seaweed was still in Boston, and somehow never actually got around to dialing. He turned on the TV for a while, watched the Orioles shut out the Yankees, and couldn't even muster the energy to care, let alone wonder why his television set-- which hadn't even worked a few days ago-- was picking up games four hundred miles away. It had been less than two months since he'd met her; less than two weeks since she'd kissed him on Broadway. And yet he couldn't seem to remember how he'd lived without Violet flitting in and out of his life, alternately disassembling or improving everything he owned, sliding her hand into his and holding on tight--

This was bullshit, he decided. He'd wasted enough time moping around after Tracy when she'd split up with him; he wasn't going to do that to himself again. Girls left you. It happened. Tracy and Violet were tough; if they could deal with it, he would deal, too.

A good workout would help, Link decided; it generally did, anyway. It certainly couldn't hurt anything.

When he flipped on the light in the studio upstairs, something seemed especially off-- even more off than the rest of the house felt without Violet in it, that was. It didn't take long for Link to figure out what; there wasn't exactly a lot of clutter in the room.

His record player was very definitely not the same shape it had been last time he'd seen it. Something extra had been attached at some point, an unsightly tangle of gears and bolts and . . . and other things Link didn't know the right name for, with a row of four hooked arms sticking straight up at the top. When he crossed the room to inspect the addition more closely, he found a note Scotch-taped to his record shelf:

_Thought I'd leave you something useful to remember me by. Load a record onto each arm, let a fifth one play, and see what happens. I promise nothing will explode. Or ruin your records._

_Violet_

Link looked from the note in his hand to the ungainly mechanical tumor that had grown on his turntable, and then back again. Even if he hadn't trusted Violet's mechanical skills, his life had gone crashing pretty far downhill lately anyway. In the grand scheme of things, he decided, having to replace a turntable and maybe a record or five might not be all that bad.

Flipping through his record collection, he chose five singles he didn't care too much about, and after another moment's hesitation clicked them carefully into place in the mechanism. On went the switch, and Link swung the needle to the start of the record and took a step back. Just in case.

The song played through as always, and nothing that Violet had installed even twitched. Link was just about to conclude that whatever it was didn't work after all when, with a click and a whirr and a terrifying grinding noise, the thing whirled into motion. Something happened that was too brief and frenetic for him to quite track, the protruding arms shuffling rapidly-- and then another song started up, and Link realized the record he'd put down had been replaced with the next.

So that was what Violet's "side project" had been. She'd built him a record changer, of all things. "And here I thought romance was dead," Link said weakly to himself, and watched in bewildered fascination as the second record ended and the third grumbled into place.

\-------

Home was home, and Violet loved it dearly; it also seemed a little dingy around the edges, somehow, and it was undeniably saddening to look up at the moon at night and know that there was no one there looking back up at her. In the end, between the enormous relief of being reunited with her family and her continued conviction that she had made the right decision, she made it almost a full week before it caught up with her. She was getting dressed, six mornings later, and suddenly it hit her all over again just how much she'd given up; the sheer abrupt weight of it made Violet sit down, hard.

A few hours later there was a knock at her door-- more like a hammering, really, which meant it was Sunny. Violet heaved a sigh. "I'm fine," she called out, as if there were half a chance her sister would _believe_ her this time. "And I wish you'd stop asking."

"I made you lunch," Sunny called back cheerfully. "I was going to leave it out here, but I think maybe I'll pick the lock and bring it in instead."

Violet considered the situation, found it hopeless, and shoved to her feet to cross the room and unlock the door. "I'm sorry I ever taught you to do that."

"Too late now." Sunny had pushed into the bedroom and shut the door behind her before Violet registered that she hadn't actually brought any food. "What've you been doing in here all day?"

"Nothing." Except thinking, which Violet was for once thoroughly sick of. "I thought you said you'd made lunch."

"I did say that." Sunny smiled oh so sweetly up at her. "I thought maybe you'd want to talk to someone. Bea is starting to worry."

If Sunny wasn't going to admit she was worried, Violet wasn't going to admit she'd actually needed the company. "And your hair's coming down," she observed, and went looking for a hairbrush.

"There's so much of it." Momentarily diverted, Sunny tugged sheepishly at her long blonde semblance of a braid. "Can I cut it off? It'd be so much easier short, and you did it to yours once so it'd be okay, right?"

"Yeah, I cut mine off once and hated it afterwards. So go right ahead, but don't blame me if you regret it." Violet nodded and pointed the hairbrush sharply at the end of her bed. "In the meantime, sit down and let me fix it for you, and maybe I'll tell you what's going on."

In an instant Sunny was perched on the edge of the bed, hands folded neatly in her lap, eyes glinting expectantly as Violet sat down crosslegged behind her and set to work unknotting her hair. She managed to keep quiet for a good few minutes, save a few little noises of protest when Violet tugged too sharply, and then asked, "So what happened?" and tried to twist around face-to-face. "Was it something really bad?"

Violet shook her head, though Sunny couldn't see her, and tried (and failed) not to think about the way Link's eyes had crinkled up at the corners when he smiled at her. "No, it wasn't bad at all." It would have been so much easier if it had been. She was used to dealing with bad.

"But you're miserable," Sunny said quietly, as if Violet hadn't noticed for herself. She sounded confused. "When you came home last week you were sitting on the library floor crying your eyes out. You haven't been like this since—" she stopped, abruptly, and Violet wondered what she was thinking.

"Since Quigley left?" she supplied helpfully after a moment, forcing herself to focus on brushing out Sunny's hair. Loose, it was almost waist-length; no wonder her sister was frustrated with it.

"Ye-es." Sunny was quiet for another moment, and then stiffened in realization. "That's what happened? You fell for some man from the future and now you're mad you had to leave him and come back to be stuck with us?"

Violet froze too, dropping a handful of hair. "What— what, Sunny, no." She abandoned hair-braiding for the moment to hug her sister tightly. "I missed you so much while I was gone, and I'm glad to be back. I promise."

With her hair free, Sunny twisted away to sit back on her heels and look up at Violet. "But now you miss him."

"I miss him a lot," Violet confessed. "But that machine's gone, I made a choice, and I chose you and Klaus, okay?"

Sunny bit her lip, glancing away for a long quiet moment. "The machine's not gone yet," she said, finally.

Reasoning entirely derailed, Violet stared at her. "It was supposed to be. No one's supposed to be able to use it now I've come back."

"Well, no one's taken it apart yet." Sunny shrugged; she was clearly trying to be casual, but Violet knew that glint in her eye never meant anything good. (Except, maybe, just this once.) "So, you know, if it vanished? That might give me and Klaus some time to convince the old folks to let you keep it."

"Don't call them that," Violet told her automatically. She was suddenly dizzy, understanding what she'd been given— the whole future, her future, was opening back up in front of her. "Sunny, I have to go, okay? I'll be back but I have to go, I have to fix this— _thank_ you."

"Anytime." Sunny grinned back, still-loose hair wrapped idly around her hand. "I don't know about Klaus, but I just don't want us to get old and die and you to still be an old maid and blaming it on us."

"You're a wretched child," said Violet affectionately, and shooed her out of the room.

\-------

Link was tired of this house. He thought he might kind of hate it, right now. He'd bought it for Tracy, and she'd broken up with him over it two days later; he'd spent maybe a total of six months living there, in the three years since. And now, even with Violet gone, the place still seemed full of her, and it was driving him nuts.

What Link needed, he decided over the next few days, was an apartment. Just a cheap little apartment down in New York with a nice big closet, and he could rent the house out to some college students come fall and they could worry about all the little mechanical improvements he was still finding. This place had been far more trouble than it was worth. In the meantime, his car was still (hopefully) racking up a ridiculous bill in a parking garage in New York, and it was past time Link took a bus or something back down there to get it, so he packed up his duffel and called the Greyhound station for a ticket.

He had locked the front door behind him and was on his way down the steps when he heard the faint whine coming from the basement, accompanied by what sounded a lot like the rattling of plates from the kitchen.

Link froze in the middle of the sidewalk, keys digging into his palm, and listened closely even after the noise had stopped. "No," he said aloud, mostly to himself. "No, there's no way--" It was some new version of Olaf, probably, he told himself. Or Seaweed had gotten hold of one of those things and was taking it for a test drive. Or, most likely, the people next door were fixing their roof with a power drill, and Link was imagining the whole thing.

After a moment of frozen disbelief, he turned on his heel so fast that he skidded going back up the steps and nearly skinned one hand catching himself; in another moment he was fumbling to get the front door back open, and in another he was dumping the duffel in the still-open doorway and running for the basement door.

They collided in the middle of the dining room, and then he was in her arms, right back where he belonged, holding on for dear life as Violet pressed frantic kisses all over his face. Brilliant, unflappable Violet, who was curling her fingers against the back of his neck and gasping his name over and over until he couldn't tell whether she was laughing or crying. Something thudded painfully in Link's chest; it felt a bit like the center falling back into the world.

"Hey." He couldn't seem to stop touching her; the silk of Violet's blouse slid and bunched under Link's fingers as he ran his hands over her arms and back, but she felt reassuringly warm and real underneath. "Hey, I've got you, it's okay, I-- oh thank God, you came back, oh _thank_ you."

The noise Violet made by his ear then was definitely a laugh, but her voice was small. "I couldn't do it," she said helplessly. "I tried, I was going to follow orders and destroy the machine, I just couldn't."

"But." It was the last word Link wanted to be saying right now, but he had to be sure. "Your family needs you." As if it made a difference; objectively speaking, Violet might not have done The Right Thing here; but Link wasn't all that great at being objective to begin with. And after the last few days, he didn't think he had the willpower to send her away again.

"I've got the machine. I can go back and forth, I can make it work. And anyway--" Her fingers traced down the side of his face; Link kissed her palm, and Violet smiled wanly. "I need _you_."

This was what Link's life was going to be like from now on, he realized dimly: Violet coming and going, and him worrying himself sick every time she went anywhere. But if that also meant a life full of reunions like this one-- well, in the grand scheme of things, Link figured that made him a pretty lucky guy.

\----------

END

\----------


End file.
